


You Haunt Me

by ihaveacleverfandomurl



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Babysitter Keith, Eventual Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Kidfic, Klance Big Bang 2018, Lance (Voltron) Speaks Spanish, M/M, Mentions of Underage, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Original Character Death(s), Panic Attacks, Single Parent Lance (Voltron), Smut, Substance Abuse, broganes, keith and lance have to figure out how to be okay together after too long of never being okay, mentions of rape/non-con, topics of abuse, topics of suicide/mental illness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2019-07-13 18:34:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16023596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihaveacleverfandomurl/pseuds/ihaveacleverfandomurl
Summary: “Her mother wanted to have her adopted, didn’t she?” comments somebody from behind him, and Lance catches his breath, his thumb stilling in its gentle brush of a ringlet away from her face.She'shis, and he'shers, this little girl – he can’t tear himself away from her, he belongs to her so completely in this moment that it hurts deep in his chest to even think about –“I’m taking her,” he whispers, presses his finger to the palm of a tiny hand peeking out from her blanket wrap, and she grasps it and stares at him. He speaks again, louder. “She’s my...my daughter, I’m taking her home.”Keith digs fingers into the crushed pack of cigarettes in his pocket that he’s half emptied in the last few hours, and in the other pocket, he clenches a hand around the rubbed smooth handle of his switchblade. Dirt is shoveled onto shiny wood, the scrape and gentle patter of the dig and release of it. Covering them. Those slack faces that he sees every time he closes his eyes.He thinks of the fifth of whiskey in his closet. Anything to feel warm again.Anything to feel anything again.





	1. Lili – Lance Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> FIRST OF ALL: this fic was written as part of the 2018 Klance Big Bang and I was so so lucky to work with the very talented & awesome [smol-bara](http://smol-bara.tumblr.com/) as an artist for it!! I'll be embedding their art when appropriate and please please go send them some love i was like squealing over every piece they sent me ahhhh thanks so much for pickin my fic Joey! Also thanks to the mods and everyone else who participated, good job y'all! This was a vv cool first bang to try out and it taught me just how hard it is to write without reader feedback ;_; i am too Nervous and Insecure about my fanfics when i don't have positive reinforcement lol  
> -  
> STORY STUFF: made both keith & lance’s families OCs & shallura is a thing bc i started writing pre-s5 and goddammit i will end it like that too  
> fyi, i have never experienced birth, nor have i dealt with addiction, I did a good bit of research but lmk if i fucked up. not a spanish speaker either but consulting with my friends who are when possible...kindly tell me when i inevitably fail please  
> (also did i use lyrics of [the song this fic was named after](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0E5aWv0YdA) in A PREVIOUS KLANCE FIC? yes. am i ashamed? no actually i’m not sir sly is fuckin great thanks bye)  
> -  
> [ALSO here is a wonderful playlist my friend made me while I was writing this fic!!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/43PdtSRtN7LZBUQ5Da92OH?si=NFC5p6U4ShqY5GsxTdAtRQ)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: major original character death, nonexplicit smut, pregnancy & non-graphic birth  
> (also cringy flirting sorry lol)

He sees her across the bar, glossy lips catching the dim red lights lining the wall, long dark hair spilling in a smooth waterfall of curls down her back. She sips at her drink and laughs at something her friend says, lashes fluttering. Creamy skin revealed in tantalizing cutouts of her clinging purple dress, legs that go on forever.

He’s in love.

Not really, but dammit if Lance McClain isn’t a romantic at heart, and if she wanted, he’d gladly take to a knee and recite sonnets to her beauty. Hey, he knows a little Shakespeare.

Sadly, the classics aren’t often well received in places like this, so he settles for sliding his way up to her unoccupied side, a napkin clutched in a hand, reaches with the other to tap her shoulder. Her blond friend’s eyebrows go up first and her eyes flick from Lance back to the lady in question, enough time for them to share a silent conversation with just a few looks, then she turns. She gives him a once over with pretty brown eyes before raising a perfect eyebrow, daring him to speak. “Yes?”

“Sorry, I just wanted to let you know...I think you dropped this.” Smoothly, he slides the napkin across the bar to her, allowing the beginning of a grin to slip across his face. A grin that lets her know that yeah, he knows he’s ridiculous, and yeah, he’s okay if she just laughs.

Well, he’d _rather_ she did more than that, but hey, coming off as a jokester able to laugh off rejection is better than coming off as a dude unable to take no for an answer.

The eyebrow lifts up further as she obligingly plucks the napkin from the counter, turning it to read his scrawl. He watches those pretty full lips part and quirk, her eyes snapping back up to give him a dry look as she realizes what he’s written: his number.

“Sorry,” he grins, raising his hands in surrender. “Would you like me to leave, come back again with a better pick up line?”

A muted scoff escapes her, but her eyes are starting to twinkle as she glances back towards her friend. A challenging smirk to him, playing along. “You can _try_ me, hotshot.”

Immediately, he turns and is back across the bar, slipping between bodies. He reapproaches with a hand raking through his hair, his brow creased, eyes dramatically searching the floor. Stops in front of the two and brings his gaze back up to the dark-haired woman, hoping “a puppy dog lost” is properly translating. “Excuse me...I wrote down my number but, well, I seem to have lost it! Can I have yours?”

The girl turns to grab at her friend’s arm as they break down in laughter.

“God, you’re awful,” the girl snickers, wiping at her eye. She shares another look with her friend, whispers something to her and presses her purse and his napkin into the blonde’s hands. Finally she turns to fully face him, folding her arms, grinning openly now as she leans a hip against the bar. “So, what’s your name, Mr. Cheeseball?”

“Lance. And yours, Soulmate?” He presses his hands to his heart.

She rolls her eyes. “Are you always like this?”

“If I can get pretty people to laugh, yes. But, uh. I can be serious. Like when I say that I’d love to know your name.”

She shifts and concedes, “Violet.”

Like the shade of that damn fine dress. “A beautiful flower for a beautiful lady. So, Violet, any chance I could get −”

Her grin widens as his phone beeps a text alert. Slowly, he pulls it out.

_[UNKNOWN]: here’s your number_

He blinks down at it, and then back up at Violet’s friend, holding Violet’s phone, and then Violet herself. Warm hazel dancing as she twirls a strand of hair around a manicured finger. She lets it fall and wiggles her fingers. “Good night, Lance. Text you later.”

“Good – good night,” he breathes, forcing himself to turn and kind of float away. Shit, he wasn’t expecting that. That actually worked. Okay. Wow.

He _really_ isn’t expecting to find himself downing one of his last drinks an hour later and setting down the glass to find Violet leaning across his table. Her cheeks are a little flushed, her makeup a little smeared, and her perfect curls have lost a bit of bounce, but she’s still breathtaking, and he almost murmurs it aloud before his tipsy brain catches up.

She’s definitely tipsy too, but not drunk, as she searches his face before straightening up, holding out her hand. When he cautiously takes it, she pulls him closer, close enough to tug him down and whisper in his ear. “I know I said text you later, but my friend ditched me. Are you free? For...the rest of the night?” She pulls back and her eyes say yes, yes that does mean what he thinks it means, and he swallows and is nodding fast.

She smiles approvingly and takes his hand to tug him towards the door. “Good. We can go to my place.”

She calls an Uber as they make their way to the curb and she turns a warm smile on him. “I hope you’re okay with not getting much sleep tonight.”

He feels like he’s melting under molten chocolate, the heat of the look she’s giving him. Her lips feel as full as they looked when they’re locked with his in the back of the car. Her half-gone gloss tastes faintly of strawberries, or maybe that was her drink, Lance doesn’t care because god –

“Fuck, you’re so hot,” he mumbles against her mouth before letting his own drop to her throat, her collarbone, kissing and then nipping as she squirms and hums. “How’d I even get here?”

“Because you are too, baby,” she giggles, threading her fingers through his hair before tugging him to her mouth again.

When the driver finally drops them with a disgruntled, “please get out,” Lance almost trips up her stairs before she’s scrabbling to unlock the door and yank him in.

She kicks off her heels and tugs him toward a half open door, lets him hoist her up to wrap her legs around his hips, and they both sink onto her bed.

It’s a mess of skin and fumbling zippers and buttons and clothes tossed on the floor and oh shit she’s got some sexy lingerie that might kill Lance right then and there. Before he strips off his pants, he has the presence of mind to grab for his wallet and feel for a plastic square that should be tucked into a fold but it isn’t −

“Shit, I don’t have...”

“Condom? In the dresser, I do −”

Slide of a drawer, feeling for something, crinkle of foil, and she lays out across soft sheets beneath him. She really is just fucking gorgeous, which he thinks he ends up panting against her neck as her nails scrape down his back, and she purrs agreeably in his ear.

It’s all going well, without a hitch, until it isn’t. He doesn’t realize until it’s too late, her breath stopping − and not in a good way as he pulls out and –

“Oh shit, oh shit, it broke!”

“F-fuck,” she whimpers, sounding dazed as she sits up in the otherwise horrible, horrible silence.

“Are you on...on birth control?”

“It’s...it’s fine, I’ll...I’ll pick up Plan B or something...” It clearly isn’t fine, and the tension in the room is awkward now, heavy and harsh.

He clears his throat, pulling back. “I can pay for that, if you, uh −”

“No.” Quick, sharp. “I think it would better if you would just − if you would just go.”

“Ah, sure,” he mumbles, snatching up his clothes to tug haphazardly on. Fighting nervous guilt weighing heavy in his stomach, he scurries towards the front door and turns back. “I’m...sorry. Good night.”

That’s the last glimpse he thinks he’ll see of her, skin catching in the soft glow from city lights outside as she heads toward the bathroom, tugging her hair away from her face and worrying her lip, sparing him one final hurried glance.

The door closes.

***

TWO MONTHS LATER

Lance nearly drops his sandwich when his phone rings on his lunch break, peering suspiciously at the random number. Cautiously, he presses answer.

“Hello?”

“Is this Lance?” The feminine voice isn’t entirely familiar, so Lance swallows his bite of salami, cheese, and dry bread and clears his throat awkwardly.

“Uh, yeah. Who’s this?”

“Violet? From the bar?” A silence as he tries to remember. “...Two months ago, Lance. You came home with me.”

Oh, _shit_. “Yeah! Yeah, no, I know!”

“We need to talk.” Her voice is clipped. “Can we meet up somewhere? Soon?”

“Yeah, uh, um...tomorrow afternoon?” He grabs for a post-it to write it down. “Lunch? There’s a Cuban place on Second Street that’s not too expensive...”

“Yeah. Fine. Noon.”

“O-okay.”

She hangs up, and he pushes the rest of the sandwich into the trash. He’s not hungry anymore.

***

He kind of knows, subconsciously. A wordless sort of acceptance has been beating itself through his veins, throughout the day and into the night. He can’t sleep, can’t even really say why, but his pulse won’t calm from a frantic gallop once.

 Even braced for it, it doesn’t stop the punch to his gut that the first words out of her mouth are.

“I’m pregnant.”

She’d waited until he sat down, but just barely. He has to blink and sit back heavily and try to breathe.

“Okay,” he finally croaks, looking up at her. “What do...what do you want to do?”

Violet presses her lips together. She looks tired, her hair limp, brown eyes dull now. He slips fingernails into his mouth and bites down – he kicked the habit years ago, but he needs something, something to ground himself...can’t have a panic attack now...

“I don’t want an abortion.” Her eyes search the table, off in space.

“Okay, okay,” he repeats, dropping his fingers to the tabletop to cling, then tap, echo his bouncing leg under the table. Lets the silence stretch again for a minute. “Are you gonna...keep it?”

She huffs and looks up, up to the ceiling, liquid swimming in her eyes and he wants to reach out but – “I don’t know! I can’t – I’m so – shit, I don’t know.”

“Okay,” he forces himself to say in a more soothing tone, because it’s not his place to be the most freaked out, he’s not the one that’s dealing with something growing inside his body right now. “It’s...you don’t have to know, right now. That’s okay.”

Finally, she looks at him. Laid bare, chest heaving. “I need help. I can’t do this by myself.”

And yeah, yeah, he’s nodding as his stomach does a flip. “Okay,” he murmurs, one more time, as an awkward server eases her way up to the table with menus. The slap of plastic on the table and their eventual mumbled orders are some of the last noises between them until they’re finished, when she stands first and he gets up to follow her out the door.

“I’ll call you? And you can call me?” he asks, shoving hands into his pockets. Pauses. “Or we could...we could make this a weekly thing? Meeting up?”

For the first time that day, her brow unfurrows as she turns to him. Not a full smile curving her mouth, but close to one. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.”

He can muster his own smile now, can meet hazel brown and feel some kind of warmth that allows him to tug his fingers from his pockets and nervously hold out his arms. And her lips part and she sort of stumbles forward against his chest. A small body that he wraps himself around. She shivers and his grip tightens and she breathes, “Thank you.”

***

Violet likes soup, Lance prefers tacos. Most of the time, they both end up somewhere cheap eating barebones salads. Sometimes they’re too broke to order anything but a plate of fries and a warm drink (coffee for him, tea for her).

There’s a point Lance hits when lunchtime on Tuesdays becomes the highlight of his week, when he looks forward to stepping into a shop and seeing a heart-shaped face turn up eagerly and smile at him. Somewhere along the way, he starts calling her _Vi_ , she starts disturbing other patrons laughing at his stupid jokes, and hugs are an easy, standard opening and closing to each meeting.

Something jumps in his chest when a month in to their meetings, she leaps up when he steps in the door and waits there for him, vibrating with wide, shining eyes.

“Feel!” is all she says before grabbing his hand and pressing it against her stomach. There’s a _bump_. And it’s _real_.

He can’t breathe for a minute, and she’s chewing on her lip and smiling as he struggles to form words. His eyes are watering already when she sniffs a half-sob.

“It’s a baby,” he mumbles, beaming.

“Yeah,” she laughs. “It is.”

***

After that, though, The Baby is frustrating, heavy, tiring, irritating, restless, and terrible. Or so Violet complains grumpily as the months pass by. Their weekly get-togethers have gone biweekly, sometimes three times a week, not just lunches, but activities too, get togethers at each other’s apartments. Not for the baby, necessarily. Just to hang out. But also, for the baby, because the kid sure tries to make itself known whenever possible.

“See!” she growls one day as they stroll through a park, tugging up her baggy sweater and yanking Lance’s hand to her now visibly swollen belly again. Kicking. He almost has a heart attack. “So annoying! It won’t stop!”

“But it’s...cute,” he ventures. Can’t stop the grin from spreading across his face because those are unmistakable tiny feet in there, beating against his fingers. Tiny feet of _their baby._

She narrows her eyes at him, but her own mouth twitches a little. “Try making a tiny human yourself and get back to me on how cute all the terrible side effects are.”

“But nothing bad, right? Or nothing out of the ordinary?” He tucks her hair behind her ear and she wrinkles her nose at him.

“No, nothing wrong,” she sighs, stretching backward. “It’s giving me the normal amount of grief.”

He’s been thinking recently... “Have you come up with any names?”

“I’m gonna have an ultrasound to check the gender next appointment. So, I’ll start thinking then.”

He hasn’t asked in a while. “Do you know now – if you’re going to keep it?”

Her face drops. “I’m not...sure. I don’t know if I can...”

“That’s fine. It’s good. I was just thinking, you know −”

“I just feel like somebody looking for a kid could love them so much more than I could,” she says in a rush, pressing her fingers to her mouth. Like she didn’t mean to say that. Like she’s about to cry because she said that.

He stops walking. “Hey −”

“Like, I...I love them. Fuck, I do. I just...I’m _twenty-one_ , and I barely make enough for myself, and, and, I don’t know the first thing about kids, I’m an only child for Christ’s sake, and I...I _want it_ , but −”

“Vi,” he says, and takes her hands, and she hiccups. “You don’t have to justify it, all right? You didn’t ask for this. You don’t have to keep it.”

It kind of shocks him, the tug of pain in his chest when he says that. Maybe he’s gotten too attached to this little nameless being, feels like he has a stake in their life now. Wants to see them beyond birth, doesn’t want to just hand them off to a stranger, never to be seen again. But he can’t ask Violet to give up her life just so that he can watch the kid grow up nearby.

And he’s in her same position, he can’t keep a baby. He’s only twenty-two, doesn’t have the time, money, space. He can’t do it.

Can he?

***

“ _It’s a girl!_ ” she screams in his ear when he picks up the phone, and he nearly screams back, but she’s already rushing on. “Come over, come over!”

And he just manages to chuckle out assent before she’s hung up on him.

She’s talking a mile a minute already when she opens the door to let him in. “What about Carly? Or Charlie? Charlotte! Or Ashley. Jenny? Lance!” she whines, running back towards her room and flopping backwards onto her bed. He closes the door behind him and follows, already laughing.

“I like the idea, but I don’t think a baby girl would appreciate being named Lance Junior,” he snickers as he looks around the bedroom. When they hang out at her place, it’s always been in her tiny living room. Never here. The bedroom of five months ago.

“Shut up, smartass,” she grins, sitting up. “A name, a name!”

His eyes go to her hand, on her stomach – bulging through her thin t-shirt now. “Ashley, Carly?” he repeats. “Boring. Come on, those are all so _bland_.”

“Well, what would you say? Would you really rather name her after yourself? La...Le...”

“Liliana,” Lance starts, and he was going to continue with more ideas, but he has to stop there because it’s _right_.

“Lily?” Violet murmurs thoughtfully. “Like the flower. I could just continue the theme.”

“No, no, Liliana,” Lance insists. “She’s gotta stay true to her Cuban roots!”

“Lily.”

“Liliana!” he grins, falling onto the bed next to her. “ _¡Es importante!_ ”

“Fine!” she laughs, rubbing her belly. “Liliana, then. She’s Liliana.”

_Until she’s someone else’s._

They lie there together for a while, quiet, before she turns her head to look at him. “Hey, Lance.”

“Yeah?” He looks at her too. Warm brown eyes, fond.

“I’m glad it’s you. I’m glad we’re friends, because of this.”

He has to almost hold back a happy tear, knows the look she’s giving him can’t be half as sappy as the one he’s giving her, because Lance is still a romantic, okay, and…

He reaches out to squeeze her hand. “Me too, Vi.”

***

He’s spoken about... _the situation_ to his parents, of course. And Violet’s discussed it with hers.

He talked to his family over the phone – he hasn’t seen them since he left Cuba for the promise of a scholarship to the American college he’s now working his ass off to keep. They hadn’t seemed to have much to say about it. His mama went quiet when he told her, his father sighed. His siblings, or the ones at home anyway, gasped and giggled over speakerphone when he repeated it for the third time for them.

Neither he nor Violet have really shared the details, though – they’re a little too complicated, a little too odd. They’re not dating, not romantically involved, it’s not like they can bring each other home to meet the family. They’re both silently thinking of the possibility that if this tiny human is gone from their lives in a few months, will they maintain this bond?

Lance’s friends tease about him going to see his girlfriend, roll their eyes sometimes if he starts talking about it all for too long. That’s the worst he gets, though.

Violet doesn’t talk about it much, but sometimes she looks drawn and tired after spending time with her own friends. Doesn’t like to talk about the situation with her parents. Usually she laughs it off, but she’s broken down before. “They don’t get it, they think I’m just...stupid!” she’s cried into his shoulder. He knows she hasn’t seen her parents in person for at least a year, even though they only live a few hours away.

But they keep their lives separate – because nobody would understand, because it would just be a mess, because maybe Liliana will come and go and maybe they’ll never see each other again...because, because, because.

Lance hasn’t seen so much as a picture of Violet’s parents, so he certainly isn’t prepared to meet them, especially under the circumstances when they finally do.

The phone is shrill at three am. Just like that first fateful call of Violet’s, Lance doesn’t know what’s in store when he jumps and scrambles for the cell, rubbing vestiges of sleep from his eyes.

“Hello?”

“Lance.” She’s kind of breathless, and he tries to wake up, tumbling out of bed before his brain catches up.

“Wha...what’s going on?”

“I think...Liliana’s coming. I’ve been having contractions for a while, I wasn’t sure, I thought it wasn’t like, _real labor_ , but now my water broke and – I − I need to get to the hospital −”

His breath catches in his chest and he’s grabbing for clothes as he stumbles to the door. “I’ll take you, I’ll be there soon.”

***

“I don’t know what to do,” she pants when she opens the door. “I mean, I know. I think. They talked to me about what to do. Shit, they’re just, coming quicker now and I just... I think I should tell my parents but...”

“We can call your parents while we drive, here, come on, let’s −”

He bundles her into his backseat and tries to drive with hands shaking on the steering wheel as she murmurs into her phone – he catches “she’s coming” and “Lance is” and something slightly angry that sounds like “we talked about this.”

It’s a whirl of activity when they get there, whisking Vi away to be examined and leaving Lance standing lamely alone, his heart in his throat and his fingers tapping triple time against his thighs.

It takes a while for anything to happen – only fraying Lance’s nerves further, three fingers bitten to bleed in his mouth, his nails gone. He wants to call his own parents, too, talk to his family, ask them how to deal with this, ask them if they’d video chat and meet − meet their granddaughter, their niece, but afterwards, if he and Vi go their separate ways...when Liliana has to go home with somebody else...

He types out and re-types out text after text – to his mother, his father, his favorite older sister Gwen and several of his younger siblings. He deletes each one and nearly throws his phone across the room as he yanks at his hair.

He almost misses the two, too busy fidgeting in his waiting room chair to notice just another couple of pale-faced people entering through sliding doors. But then he hears “Violet Harrison” out of the mouth of somebody at the desk, and shoots up, immediately halfway to the pair’s side, wobbling.

“Violet? Are you −”

They turn. Violet’s father has salt and pepper waving through short locks, but has hints of that same look she has – previously dark, thick hair, the shape of her brown eyes. Violet’s mother is small like her, with her button nose, her heart shaped face.

The woman’s eyes narrow at Lance’s words, and her husband presses a hand to her shoulder as he, too, looks Lance over. “You’re...the boy? The father?” Distrust is written in every line of his face.

Lance swallows and wipes his palms on his jeans and nods and holds out a hand. Kind of feels like he might black out from nerves. “I’m – I’m Lance.”

They glare and finally Mrs. Harrison shakes his hand, eyes cold.

“I’m...sorry...” Lance mumbles weakly. _God, what did you even say in this situation?_ “Both of us...we tried to be careful. I didn’t mean to −”

“Well, you did,” snaps Mr. Harrison.

Lance flinches, but something in his tone sets off a flicker of rebellion, because Liliana is _good_ , they can’t write it up to him just knocking up their daughter, they’ve barely been there these past few months with Vi, they haven’t been there with her every step of the way –

“I care about her, you know,” he says, probably too much of a bite in his voice. “I was...I’m _still_ ready to be there for her, when she needs me. In whatever she does. And she...she’s cried because _you_ weren’t there.”

A small softening in both of their faces, regretful. Mr. Harrison’s lips part as his gaze drifts guiltily to the side, his wife’s eyebrows drawing together in her own concern. “Are you – dating, then?”

Lance chews on his lip and digs his hands into his pockets. “No. We’re friends. She’s one of my best friends.”

They aren’t exactly completely reassured, but they seem...accepting of this, for once, and the poor, poor woman behind the desk who’s been forced to observe the entire terse exchange quietly clears her throat. “Violet Harrison, you said? We can take you to her room.”

***

Vi is in a hospital gown on the bed, hair spread across the pillow, a few tiny beads of sweat already forming on her brow.

She seems to relax when she sees him, falling back against the bed, but stiffens once more when her eyes travel past him to her parents.

“You’re here,” she mumbles as Lance finds himself already at her side, holding her hand.

“Of course we are,” whispers her mother, and Lance turns to look at them – frozen in the doorway, helpless.

Violet’s brow scrunches. “Why would you be? You just get mad at me whenever I try to talk to you.”

Her mother breaks first, taking Lance’s place to grab her daughter’s hand, already crying. Lance falls back to lean against the wall, fiddling with his loose pajama shirt hem as he watches.

“I’m sorry, baby, we just...you leave home as soon as you can, don’t talk to us forever, and call us up out of the blue saying that you’re...you’re pregnant? We didn’t know what to do!”

“We should have,” says her father tiredly, and Vi’s crying too as he steps to take her other hand, and a doctor is politely knocking on the already open door as she observes the scene and saying that she needs to check up on how Violet’s doing and “just double checking” but hadn’t Violet said she hadn’t planned on having anyone in the room and she “can escort them out if need be.” Lance can already feel nervous disappointment pooling in his gut but he gets it, he understands, he just –

“Lance! Lance can stay. Please stay. Fuck, it already hurts. Please.”

He’s jumping back, ready to take up position at her side, and her hand is clutching his like a vice as he smiles nervously down at her. They both look to her parents, turning back at the door.

“I’ll...I’ll see you after, okay? You can hold her.”

And Mrs. Harrison smiles tremulously and Mr. Harrison nods gruffly and Vi is looking back up at him with narrowed eyes as they leave. “I’m going to probably squeeze your hand off, and you’re going to let me, because I’m fucking giving birth. Okay?”

He chuckles. “Hear you loud and clear. I’ve said my goodbyes to the hand.”

They give her an epidural, but she still sweats buckets, pale as the sheets rumpled around her.

The doctors tell her to breathe, coach her to push, and it isn’t until her sweaty grip is weakening, her chest is fluttering up and down too fast, body shaking, skin the wrong color, so much blood that Lance squeezes her hand harder. But even as a newborn’s yells fill the room, suddenly there’s more voices, urgent ones because she’s –

“She’s not breathing,” Lance says numbly, and he tries to clutch at her slack fingers, and there’s no response. “Vi. _Vi!_ ”

“Sir, please, we need to −”

Somebody’s ushering him out, grimly blank faced, and Lance tumbles out.

Mr. and Mrs. Harrison are suddenly standing above him, eyes wide. He has to drag his gaze up to them, has to swallow three times to manage a rattle of a voice, she –

“She stopped breathing. She wasn’t breathing.”

He watches their worst fears coming true in their eyes as they reach to clutch at one another, falling back. Mrs. Harrison shaking like a leaf, Mr. Harrison stock still, his face stone.

Lance tries to stand, tries to get feet underneath himself, but he can’t. His fingers still feel the cold sweat on her skin, he can see the ghost of a slack face, hear her breath going too quick, too quick, and then gone. He can’t breathe either, suddenly, chokes on air.

The Harrisons have retreated to the corner, quietly weeping, and at first, he doesn’t know where the eruption of a wail comes from, has to clasp hands over his own mouth, stifling the noise to realize – it’s him.

He sits there, half-curled in a ball, for who knows how long. Time stands still, and it could have been five minutes or a full day passing by when a gentle hand on his shoulders shakes him, a quiet voice calling out. The Harrisons have drifted over to the woman now standing above Lance, her own face drawn.

“You’re the family of Miss Harrison, correct?”

“Yes,” manages Mr. Harrison.

Lance reaches to clutch at her arm, praying, but –

Her eyes shutter completely, and he wanted to vomit, scream, rail against the world.

She’s gone. She’s gone.

“I’m afraid Miss Harrison has died due to unforeseen complications with her birth. She suffered from amniotic fluid embolism, which led to cardiac arrest, and we were unable to revive her. I’m very sorry.”

Lance can’t hear, can’t listen anymore, they keep talking but his ears ring until –

“− The baby?” Mrs. Harrison hiccups, and Lance tears his gaze from space, looks up. The baby. Their baby.

The doctor smiles wanly. “The baby was delivered safely. She’s in the nursery, being cared for.”

“Can I see her?” Lance rasps, pulling himself up on her sleeve, he needs – “I have to – I have to...”

“Of course,” the woman says, gently freeing her arm from his grip so that she can help him to his feet. “We can go to see her.”

***

Lance’s face has dried into tight salt lines, eyes painfully dry as they weave through the halls, but when he watches the nurse pick up that small bundle and approach him, he can feel his whole body contract with a single sob, and the tears are streaming again.

He’s silently crying when she’s placed into his arms. Tiny, squished face the color of his, still slightly damp dark curls the shade of her mother’s plastered to her forehead.

She opens her eyes, grumpily, as she’s settled into his arms, brows furrowing, blinking, and she has Vi’s hazel brown. He stares, and she stares, opens her mouth. He’s bracing for a bellow, but she just sighs, smacking her lips and wriggling. Still holding his gaze.

“Her mother wanted to have her adopted, didn’t she?” comments somebody from behind him, and Lance catches his breath, his thumb stilling in its gentle brush of a ringlet away from her face.

“No. No, I’m...”

She’s _his_ , and he’s _hers_ , this little girl – he can’t tear himself away from her, he belongs to her so completely in this moment that it hurts deep in his chest to even think about –

“I’m taking her,” he whispers, presses his finger to the palm of a tiny hand peeking out from her blanket wrap, and she grasps it and stares at him. He speaks again, louder. “She’s my...my daughter, I’m taking her home.”

“Mmm,” a nurse hums. “What’s her name, honey?”

He can feel the Harrisons hovering at his shoulder, watching their granddaughter, but the tiny girl still only has curious, searching eyes for Lance.

“Liliana,” he murmurs, clutching her closer. Her miniature fingers tighten around his. “But I’m calling her Lili.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting the rest of this might be a lil patchy bc i'm in a hellhole of starting back up school & new job rn but uhhh...if the reception is nice i might post keith's prologue tomorrow ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


	2. Party Boy – Keith Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: mentions of underage, mentions of rape, relationship abuse, child abuse, alcohol and drug use, major original character deaths, suicide mention

Some of his earliest memories are watching his father tipping back a bottle. Keith watches the throat scratchy with dark stubble bob and dip, a small pink scar on the underside of his chin where hair doesn’t grow shifting with the movement of skin. Then his father’s head drops back down, bottle sloshing, wiping the clear liquid dribbling from his mouth away, and he scowls down at Keith. Usually Keith smells it then − the puff of something too strong to be water − and he knows he has to get out of the way, or that scowl will tighten like a rubber band until it snaps.

It’s just part of how it’s always been. Like how his mother “sneaks” one too many pills too often and how the house always smells like smoke of many different varieties, though they “don’t smoke in front of the kids.” Emphasis on quotations.

And most of all, like how everyone is completely broken and terrified and angry.

Shiro wants to pretend everything is fine. He cleans up after messes, comforts his crying brother, bandages everyone up, but when shit goes down, he plays deaf and dumb. It pisses Keith off for a while. Denial had never solved anyone’s problems. It didn’t put money on the table when their father got fired again and again for showing up late for jobs. Or not going at all. It didn’t calm their mother’s shaking fingers as she raised them to her temple and complained shrilly that Keith’s music was too loud and he had better turn that fucking garbage off, it was giving her a headache, but it wasn’t the music that was giving her a headache or making her slow at anything and everything or pulling curtains closed over her memories one by one.

It sure as hell didn’t heal black and blue blooming across cheekbones when somebody said something questionable to their father. Didn’t prevent their mother’s frail bird arm snapping when he tugged it too far behind her back.

Didn’t stop the slash of the stupid steak knife across Shiro’s face from scarring terribly that time when he’d stepped in front of Keith, shielding him from their screaming dad, when Keith was nine and Shiro was thirteen. Shiro had done it because the day before, he’d come home to find Keith passed out with their father’s hands around his throat.

That was the one time Shiro had acknowledged their parents’ abuse.

He’d only stood between them the once, screaming and clutching at his face after the vicious swipe, but he hadn’t moved from his position, even as blood dripped between his fingers. Keith couldn’t see the feral glare he’d been leveling at their father until he’d hurried to Shiro’s side to pry his hands from the wound. He had nearly fallen back a step at that look, even directed solely at their father. It was terrifying.

(They’d locked themselves in the bathroom and slept on the hard plastic tiles that night, Keith crying and trying to clean the enormous gash until he fell asleep on Shiro’s shoulder.)

Shiro pretended nothing had happened. But their father didn’t seem to want to touch Keith again after that.

Maybe it’s the slight hint of hesitation in his eyes when their father looks at Keith now, but as a few years pass, Keith chomps at the bit, bites out retorts, blood boiling at every turn. Shiro is impassive, deceivingly careless and willfully ignorant of the goings on in their house as ever.

But Keith can’t live as a bystander, he is made up of anything but denial − all fire and rage, staring and daring their father to make a move, to do his worst. Spits hatred back at the man that brought him into the world, that seems to despise him so utterly.

Keith’s life is full of firsts, milestones of growing up much too quick. Every year marks a new memory he’d rather forget, but he never does.

When his father lays a hand on him again, he’s eleven. Shiro is out working. Keith is angry because he’s always angry, and his father just came home with another three bottles of his favorite cheap vodka. Only in Keith’s juvenile attempts to make some stupid point he can never remember years later, a flailing hand knocks a bottle loose from his father’s grip and it shatters.

His father’s rage is much more terrifying than the shards of glass on the floor – but the glass is what Shiro has to try and patch him up from, hours later, when he finds Keith in the living room whimpering.

The broken neck of the bottle was the only thing his father had wielded against him, but the uneven lumps of scars would line his skin for years. And the emergency room trip because of how deep their father had sunk the neck of the bottle into Keith’s stomach would plague their wallets for a long, long time.

No. Denial never solved anyone’s problems. But it’s the way their family works. Keith can’t deny their issues. So soon he learns he has to try to forget them. Tries so hard that they start to disappear, because he’s starting to disappear. And so are his parents.

After the vodka bottle incident, Keith stops fighting. He can’t stay and pretend to play house with Shiro, so he leaves the house and pretends elsewhere that the house doesn’t exist.

First, it’s just a tiny middle schooler bumming a cigarette or two off the high schoolers to try and “relax.” He graduates to weed when they’re amused enough by his spitfire personality. Steals a couple stashes of alcohol from his house to impress them, and they let him drink with them, too.

He’s twelve when he first tries harder stuff, the kind of painkillers he’s seen by his mother’s bed, he pops pills, takes tabs, they let him use their colorful inventively shaped bongs and by the time he’s a freshman, he’s skipping classes consistently to accompany people on trips to dealers, on laughing, forgetful hours hiding in bathrooms and deserted hallways, and losing himself with people half the time he doesn’t even know the names of.

He starts going home less frequently. Most nights, he doesn’t sleep in his own bed. When he does finally trudge up the stairs of his front stoop and twist his keys into the lock, it’s to deal with his mother’s screeched questions, his father’s loud shouting and stomping and glaring. And Shiro.

Shiro’s veiled disappointment. Shiro’s radiating disapproval. And most of all, the sadness in his eyes that quickly overtakes the flash of relief that always appears each time Keith returns.

When Keith first starts disappearing at night, Shiro asks when they’re alone what happened, is he okay, what’s going on. He learns quick that the only response he’ll ever get to this is Keith snapping, yelling, glaring, his eyes rolling.

So he stops asking.

Keith is fourteen when he gets kissed for the first time. He hates locking lips with the soft, long-haired girl who giggles at him and presses him against a wall before he can shove her away.

The flutter of excitement in his gut when a _boy_ twists his fingers into Keith’s hair, however, is almost surprising, but not quite. The flicker of warm rightness when strong arms tug him close to lick into his mouth, to share smoke wafting between tongues, hidden in a corner. When he accepts it, though, he realizes he’s known all along.

He’s fifteen when he loses his virginity, with a cold-eyed, smirking senior who tells him he’s pretty as he sucks bruises into Keith’s neck and ignores his shaky tears.

His next few times are on shit that keeps him high and floating, most of the time. Some are with the senior. Some are with other guys, guys that heard the whispers of rumors spread too readily, too quickly: Keith’s easy, Keith’s a little slut.

And thus, his role in the scene he’s slowly being sucked into like quicksand is cemented – the kid who’ll gladly give a blowjob for a shot or two, who’ll let boys pull his hair and call him whore for a joint. It’s a place to belong, a role to fill.

He stays out for four days solid, once, just forgets to go home because there are bottles to make best friends with, glowing orange cherries to be smoked down to nothing, people who lavish him with attention. Maybe he doesn’t always like it, but it’s something to pretend with. An uncomfortable fuck for a good trip is better than an ER visit for coming back to a house he despises.

When he stumbles into his living room the night he comes back, Shiro doesn’t stare disappointedly, his eyebrows don’t furrow in worry. He yells.

He screams, and Keith’s stomach drops out.

“You can’t fucking do this to me, you can’t fucking disappear on me!”

His eyes are flashing, jaw clenched, his hands fists. And Keith, ready with a sharp retort for anything, cutting tongue more second nature than breathing, just shakes in silence because it’s _Shiro yelling at him_. Shiro’s face falls immediately, and he approaches with soft steps, slowly reaching out to rub at Keith’s back in silent apology. And Keith shivers.

He goes home more after that.

***

He’s never had an actual boyfriend before, just quick one night hookups, occasional returners. But that changes.

He meets Josh when he’s sixteen, about to turn seventeen. Josh is chill, quietly commanding, has an air about him that he knows what he’s doing, even if he’s essentially a several years out high school dropout. Unlike the others, he doesn’t shit talk Keith to his face, and Keith likes the purposeful way he kisses him. He’s hard to read, mysterious, doesn’t show much emotion, but doesn’t act angry or forceful or smug with Keith. They fuck for the first time on his birthday, and afterward as they’re lying against each other in the back of Josh’s car and catching their breath, he leans down to kiss Keith’s forehead and wish him a happy birthday – which Keith had almost forgotten, had certainly never believed Josh had known about, much less _cared_ about.

The next day, when Keith drops back to lean against the hood of the car, Josh hands him a bottle of rum and asks him with all apparent seriousness if he wants to go steady. And Keith stares at the bottle, back up at Josh, and thinks... _screw it_. He takes a swig and says with appropriate aloofness, “Sure. Whatever.”

Josh turns out to have connections, can get Keith not just cheaper shit, but also free shit. Knows where the best parties are, the bars that don’t card. Puts a word in and gets him a few piercings, the start of a tattoo collection for almost nothing – the things Keith’s wanted to get for years, but couldn’t afford, would piss his family off, but Josh just snaps his fingers and it’s done. And honestly, it seems like a dream – he’s a good fuck with cool friends who actually acts like he respects Keith half the time.

It isn’t until years later that Keith realizes how desperately he clung to that – that feeling that maybe somebody besides his brother gave half a shit about him as a human. The false feeling, of course. Another thing he doesn’t realize til later.

He starts staying out of the house again, gets to know Josh’s bed in his parents’ garage better than his own. Goes to party after party after party, time blends into itself and he’s high or drunk or tripping more often than he’s sober, mixing shit that probably shouldn’t be mixed but it’s fine, he’s fine, right?

Later when he thinks back, he remembers only vague bits of the night when it happens – the latest fucked up chapter in his hundred-book series of bad life decisions – booming bass, flashing lights, lots of bodies on a giant dance floor. He’s dancing with somebody, a stranger – he’s already been passed around to several, not entirely by his own volition – Josh went somewhere – he lost his shirt along the way and he’s just wearing too-tight shorts – someone’s kissing his neck and grinding on him. Keith closes his eyes and tries to breathe, tries to focus. Josh is there, suddenly, glaring coolly at the person holding Keith’s hips – ordering them off – kissing Keith hard – his fingers at Keith’s mouth, pretty colored tablets in his hand and then on Keith’s tongue. Flashes after that, even murkier. His hand in Keith’s pants – they’re suddenly in the car, Keith slumped in the seat as Josh strips him completely – they’re somewhere else, a crowded house party, a drink in his hand – somebody lifts it to his lips and tips it back – he chokes, they laugh – in a darkened, unfamiliar bedroom, Josh is pressing him against the bed, fucking him... _again_ , Keith hazily thinks, the car, he did it then too − it hurts, a lot – he’s cold and hot and puking and passing out and –

***

The quiet, clinical hum of machinery, the steady beep of a heart monitor. Keith’s mouth tastes like shit and is dry as the fucking desert. He hurts everywhere, aches, and his thoughts seem to be moving through jello. He tries to crack open crusty eyes, squints and blinks at the harsh lighting. Lots of tubes and needles of IVs in his arms. A hospital gown.

Hushed crying.

He attempts to turn in the bed he’s lying on. Sees a crumpled figure in a chair in the corner. Dark hair, a small streak of white, hands clutched to his face as he leans over his knees...

Shiro.

“Hey,” Keith croaks, and Shiro looks up.

His eyes are red, face puffy. Bags under his eyes, hair greasy.

“You look like shit,” Keith tries to snark, but Shiro doesn’t smile, just takes a shaky breath and wipes his palms against his cheeks, shaking his head.

“It’s fine,” Keith tries again. “It’s not that bad, Shiro.”

“You were missing for _weeks_ , Keith!” Shiro explodes, in a cracked voice that devolves back into hiccupped sobs – entirely worse than anger. Completely worse. “I thought you were _dead_!” Horror in his voice as it drops off, roughened and hoarse.

Keith can’t say anything then, because it’s entirely his fault, and god does that voice gut him. He didn’t come home, didn’t check in. He’s been wrapped up in Josh, had forgotten that Shiro was waiting patiently for him at home, anxiously, ready to patch him back up like he always did. He’d always been there, quiet and yielding though he often was. And Keith had just...forgotten him. The person who’d cared for him. For the thrill of a new relationship.

Speaking of –

“Where’s Josh?” he asks muzzily, and Shiro’s already creased brow furrows further.

“I don’t know your friends, Keith – who’s Josh?”

“My...my – boyfriend. He was with me, didn’t he −” Oh. Oh, those are not pleasant memory fragments, darkness and pain and didn’t Josh – “Didn’t he bring me here? He had to have.”

Shiro’s face has suddenly gone cold, and Keith realizes with a shiver that it’s cold _fury_ in his eyes, and it’s shocking.

“ _I_ brought you here, Keith.”

“How’d you −”

“I was looking for you at every party I could find. Every night. Everyone knew you, but never knew where you were. Always laughed me off. But they’d seen you, that night, said they were drinking with you, that you’d been off with another guy, heading upstairs.”

And Keith thinks he knows what he was doing upstairs, but he’d never remember the act of climbing those stairs himself – surely he was tugged by the hand, maybe carried, maybe he’d even crawled up the stairs in search of a toilet and was pulled into the bedroom he vaguely remembers – he feels a little sick but his stomach completely drops when Shiro speaks his next words in a broken rasp.

“I finally found you, naked, face down in your own vomit, unconscious, covered in – covered in semen, Keith. And alone. They’d all left you completely alone. Barely breathing.”

Keith’s head spins. Alone? But Josh had been there, Josh had been fucking him when he’d been blacking out, surely he hadn’t just...left him there?

He doesn’t know he’s crying a little until Shiro is kneeling next to him, rubbing thumbs across his cheeks to wipe them away, and looking so so sorry, his hands dropping to hover hesitantly at Keith’s shoulders like he wants to hold him close, and Keith really wants him to, for once, wants to let his body cave into a sob and fall into Shiro’s embrace. So he does, folding against him limply.

“Keith, I don’t know what you’ve been doing, who you’ve been spending time with,” Shiro finally whispers, his fingers oh-so-gently stroking at Keith’s head. “But you need to stop. Please. No more. No fucking more.”

And there, in that hospital room, wrapped in his brother’s arms, after experiencing being a breath away from death, Keith inhales and nods and says, “Yes.” And means it. Makes a promise that he will stop. To Shiro. To himself. Thinks he won’t break it.

His parents have to make him break it, of course. They have to up and leave and turn the one decision he made for himself on its head.

One final act of violence against him on their way out.

***

They punish him when he gets home. His father isn’t there, but when he goes into his mother’s room, she slaps him. His cheek stings until his father returns, and his already aching, tired body has to deal with another real beating.

Shiro steps in when he realizes what’s happening, looks tired when Keith has to limp across the porch and into the house, nursing that start of new bruises.

He ignores the itch of need for something to numb, to distract. Hurts instead and _deals_ with it.

After that, it seems like they’ll return to their usual routine of getting on with their lives. Shiro goes back to work – one of their few steady incomes. Keith’s mother tries to “keep the house” and ignore the rest of them with her own vices. His father takes and leaves jobs and buys his bottles and smokes and who knows what else.

Keith starts attending classes again, even though he’s long since lost any ability to graduate on time. But maybe...he’ll get there, eventually.

He starts ignoring his old “friends.” Says no when he’s offered a joint. Doesn’t go to parties. Doesn’t steal shit from his parents. Gets twitchy and cold and dry mouthed sometimes and wants something, needs something to take the edge off. But he’s _clean_.

And most of all, he ignores his phone when it lights up with Josh’s calls and deletes each and every text he sends. He doesn’t think Josh will be determined enough to seek him out, but he does.

Of course, it’s only the start of one of the worst days of his life.

The car is familiar but out of context when it pulls up next to him after school. He glances at it and keeps walking – it’s not his fault if some driver gets a ticket for parking in the yellow.

“Hey!”

He freezes for a moment, realizing why he knows the peeling powder blue of the old Honda Accord, feels a wash of dread at the shout. Starts off trying to run, but Josh is older, bigger, stronger. He catches up to close a hard grip around Keith’s wrist.

“Hey, what the fuck?” Josh isn’t quiet now. Isn’t passively cool. He’s angry, and Keith knows what happens when people are angry. He shrinks from the flashing eyes.

“Keith, what the shit have you been doing? Ignoring all my fucking calls!”

“Don’t touch me,” Keith tries to spit with venom, but his voice shakes. Josh’s hand doesn’t even loosen.

“Answer me.”

Keith is shaken, like a fucking dog. He hates this. Hates feeling helpless.

“I was in the hospital,” Keith snaps. “And I don’t want to talk to you. Leave me alone.”

“We’re _together_!”

“Didn’t stop you from fucking me up and leaving me puking and unconscious in a stranger’s bed! Didn’t stop you...didn’t stop you raping me!” Keith yells, and can’t talk anymore suddenly.

Josh draws back, brows pulling together, actually almost speechless for a minute. “I...I didn’t! You’re fine. We were having fun!”

Keith is shaking his head before Josh even finishes, lip tugged between his teeth so hard he tastes metallic tang, shredding his skin. He tries to tug away again.

“I’m done,” he finally rasps, “I’m gone. Get away from me.”

When he yanks again, Josh’s grip is loose enough that he can fall back, free, and start to run.

He looks back, once. Josh isn’t following. Just standing there, staring. Eyes narrowed, hand still outstretched. Keith swallows and keeps running. To the sound of his own beat up sneakers pounding the sidewalk, Keith thinks of the switchblade hidden under his mattress at home, thinks that he’ll carry it in his pockets now, thinks that if Josh’s fingers twist across his skin again, Keith will stab the blade into his gut. Over. And over. And over again.

_Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud._

***

Blood is still pounding in his ears when Keith flies up his front steps. He shoves the door open, heart still in his throat, keys jangling in his hand, and slams it shut.

His eyes don’t immediately fall on the chair. They find the half-dried liquid stain on the carpet first, follow it to the dropped bottle spilling across the floor. Up to limp fingers hanging over the arm of the worn burgundy chair. A palm is resting on a bit of stuffing that’s always poked out, yellowing, discolored with whiskey brown.

Keith trails the palm up a loose arm, doesn’t hear his keys drop.

Leaning back in the chair, a half rolled up sleeve of a button down, a t-shirt underneath, both covered with – his mouth full of – vomit, leaking down his front.

His chest, unmoving, eyes glossy half closed and Keith was going to puke too, felt his legs shaking dropping to his hands and knees crawlingtohisfather’sbodyhe _couldn’tbedead_ –

“Mom!” he croaks out after shaking his unresponsive father’s shoulder for a meaningless amount of time. Doesn’t remember the last time he called her Mom. But he shoves himself up, stumbles, falls again and drags himself to his parents’ bedroom because he’s desperate.

Can’t comprehend when he sees her laid out on the bed, bony hands folded neatly, eyes closed, face pale. Shakes her too, but there are too many emptied sleeping pill bottles on the floor that he’s kicked over in his rush. Feels like maybe the world isn’t real when he sees the note, she left a note, a slightly crumpled piece of paper – a suicide note written on the back of a receipt, that would be the way his folks went, like the trash they were –

He thinks he reads it. Over and over. He might have read it a hundred times, he never understood a word.

Shiro finds him there hours later with numb limbs, rocking back and forth a little, and hurries him out of the house where death hangs in the air, a choking, putrid thing. He must have called someone in a moment of not holding Keith because after a while there are flashing lights of emergency vehicles splashing across the scene, but then Shiro’s hugging him again and crying into Keith’s shoulder. Keith isn’t crying, though, just still clutching a sweat-dampened receipt with smudged letters − _I found him and I couldn’t go on_. He’s just very empty and cold.

He might start hiccupping himself into hysterics at some point, maybe laughing, but not crying, never crying – not wet faced like Shiro, who clutches him tighter.

They’re dead. His mother –

His father. His father is dead. After all those years of invincibility. Just choked on his own stupid addiction and poof, gone. It was that easy for him to leave – to slip away, still unknowing and uncaring of just what he’d done to his family. He got off so...so easy.

While Keith is left here, still fucked up in the aftermath of his explosion of life.

He shivers and his teeth chatter and he’s so cold – needs something to warm him up...Shiro’s arms around him aren’t enough.

His chest is freezing over.

***

The funeral is the cheapest they could manage. Keith wears a black suit that hasn’t fit him in years and feels a numb kind of nothing as Shiro stands silently beside him and the coffins are lowered into the earth.

He digs fingers into the crushed pack of cigarettes in his pocket that he’s half emptied in the last few hours, and in the other pocket, he clenches a hand around the rubbed smooth handle of his switchblade. Dirt is shoveled onto shiny wood, the scrape and gentle patter of the dig and release of it. Covering them. Those slack faces that he sees every time he closes his eyes.

He thinks of the fifth of whiskey in his closet. Anything to feel warm again.

Anything to feel anything again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok now for sURE updates are getting patchy sorry i'm gonna aim for at least one a week but i gotta really revise some stuff & rework more


	3. Transitions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: fuck people read these fics for the romance don't they i mean i entered this to write klance for the goddamn big bang right  
> also me: wow i would die for my own daughter oc who needs klance when u can have lovingdad!lance who will do anything for his girl  
> (don't worry y'all romance will happen but i sure as hell ain't rushin establishing my baby girl's love for her papa)

\- **YOU HAUNT ME** -

YEARS LATER

“ _Papa!_ ”

The sound of the shriek seizes Lance’s chest like nothing else – he needs to find her, where is –

“ _Lili!_ ” he screams, he’s treading water that sucks him down, breathing in liquid but he has to get to her. There, across rolling waves, her head barely above surface, arms thrashing. He throws himself in her direction, forcing limbs seizing with cold to move, arms and legs weak and aching, but she’s going under, crying and choking.

He reaches her in a flurry, too late, pulls her limp form to him, above water. Her fluffy curls are matted and plastered to her face as he holds her to his chest. Water runs from her slack lips as he tries to tip her head, shake her, compress her chest as he kicks feebly. She’s so small, so still and cold in his arms.

“ _No, no, bebé, mi corazón, por favor, Lili,_ please please please,” he babbles as he spits water and strokes her head. “You can’t leave me, _corazón_ , you can’t, I love you, Lili, please.”

“Papa,” she says, and he jerks and startles himself up.

He’s not holding her drowned body, she’s safe, safe in bed next to him because she was too scared to sleep alone in her room in their new apartment. His baby is safe as she rubs her face and blinks up at him with soft, tired brown eyes in the dim light. He lets breath he’s only been gasping in for several minutes now out in a whoosh, presses a hand to his mouth for a moment and lets himself wrap his arms around her, falling back to the mattress. She nestles against him without complaint, small head and full mess of curls nuzzled under his chin. He presses a kiss to the crown of it and tries to calm his shaking, rocking her gently as she sighs sleepily.

“I love you, Papa,” she whispers, and his chest swells as he screws his eyes shut and clutches her tighter.

“Love you too, _corazón_.”

***

 _Fuck_ is Lance tired when he comes to again, to the buzzing beep of an alarm set much too early and the slightest hint of sunlight peeking through the curtains. Groaning, he tries and fails to lift an arm to cover his eyes. There’s a reason his arms feel like overcooked noodles, like they had in his dream. He’d spent all of yesterday hauling cardboard boxes up and down stairs.

Moving is hell.

After Lance lost his last job, the new one he’s managed to land a good several hours away from their old place offered an opening in an apartment complex their higher-ups own. The rent is much, much lower, so it’s not that surprising that the elevator in the old building doesn’t actually work. Lance can’t complain too much, this place has cut a third of what they’d been paying in the past, he can catch a bus to his new work, and Lili’s school is just down the way. He just wishes he knew somebody in the neighborhood.

Well, truly, he wishes...he could just move back home, to Cuba. Bring Lili back to the warm arms of his own mother, an _abuela_ she’s never known. He misses his brothers and sisters, wants his daughter to learn their faces. Wants to have more than a parade of acquaintances running through his life.

Is this really the time to regret leaving behind everyone he knows? He hasn’t been homesick in a while. Huffing a breath, he blinks and peers around the unfamiliar living room he’s squeezed his bed into, to give Lili her own half-bed, half-storage room. Moving has stirred up too many feelings. He didn’t think it would dredge up awful nightmares, but that would be his luck, wouldn’t it?

 “Suck it up and deal,” Lance growls to himself as he looks down to a still-sleeping Lili, pressed against his side, and tucks the covers tighter around her. He didn’t get here – with Lili depending on him – by feeling sorry for himself. He can’t start now. As much as he misses being surrounded by family and friends, Lili’s his only priority.

Besides, if he doesn’t have anyone else close to him, he can’t lose them.

***

“ _Bebé_ , get up and eat something before we go,” Lance shouts from their cramped bathroom as he towels his hair dry. He knows she isn’t up yet because she always whines and drags her feet whenever he tries to wake her up before his shower. “Have some toast!”

After a few minutes and the sound of shuffling footsteps: “There’s no bread, Papa!” comes the grouchy little shout back through the door.

Crap. That’s right. He hasn’t found a place to grab groceries yet…just unaffordable rich people stores. He’d have to look around more after his job training today, after he drops Lili back off at home. Thank god his real hours don’t start until Wednesday, he only has a few hours for the first days of the week – and thus, time to help Lili find her way around.

“Here, Lili, a granola bar.” He’s still trying to button up his one nice shirt and flatten his hair as he pulls an almost empty box from the top kitchen shelf – just about the only shelf occupied.

Lili rubs her eyes and pouts as he unwraps it for her and presses it to her stuck-out lips.

Quiet admonishment. “ _Liliana_.”

“I’m not hungry, I wanna sleep.”

Lance squeezes his own eyes shut and tries to reframe. “It’s your first day of school. Don’t you want to make friends?”

Lili scowls. “I’m going too early! School won’t start for another few _hours_!”

“ _Bebé_ , I wish I had someone else to bring you to school on time, but I have to be in work by then. I can’t have you walking alone.” Lance gives up on his hair and tries to slip on his shoes without untying them, which doesn’t work.

“Why not? You always let me walk around at home!”

Lance pauses. The school is only some odd blocks and a bit kitty-corner to their apartment. And, well, he _is_ about to start hours that overlap both the start and end of her school time and he kind of maybe wouldn’t be able to walk her anyway…

“I’ll walk you to and from school these first two days, all right? Then maybe we can see if you can walk alone. _Sí, corazón? Un buen compromiso?_ ”

“ _Sí_ ,” yawns Lili, but with the start of a smile for the first time that day as she finally starts nibbling at her breakfast.

Lance ruffles her hair as he stuffs his own granola bar in his mouth and snags the apartment keys from the counter. Around a mouthful of oats, he smiles back.

***

“See? You’ve been paying attention to the way we came, right, Lili?”

Lili yawns again as she nods and Lance fights back a sigh as he looks up at her new school building. “This is important.”

“ _Sí, Papa,_ ” Lili says and reaches up for him, entirely disarmingly, puppy eyes full force. Of course he melts. He always does.

He picks her up for another smooch while he checks the time – and nearly drops his phone.

“I’ve got to go, I’ll be late. Have a good first day. _Te quiero, mijo._ ”

“ _Yo también te quiero, Papa._ ” She peppers his face with kisses like he sometimes does to her. Then it’s up the stairs – depositing her into a teacher’s care – and off to catch a bus he’s already missed.

He arrives five minutes to when he’s due, huffing and puffing and already sweating through his nice shirt. So much for a good first impression. The receptionist for the surprisingly nice, mostly glass building eyes him in alarm as he kind of slumps across the desk.

“Hi, I’m here for –”

“Lance McClain?”

A man in a well-fitted suit has appeared next to the desk, a sneer stamped across his sharp-boned face. His unnaturally white hair is long, pulled back into a slick ponytail. He radiates contempt, and his posh accent doesn’t help matters.

“Yes!” Lance straightens up and tries to breathe, wiping his hands surreptitiously on his pants.

The man watches him do it, eyebrow arched. “You’re almost late. I’m Lotor Galra, your boss.”

“Yes, sir, I’m sorry, I –”

“No excuses! Come on!”

Lance, who’d been about to say that he’d never do it again, snaps his mouth shut and blinks instead. Taken aback, he glances at the receptionist, hoping for some kind of sympathetic solidarity – maybe the man is like this to everyone, but she’s intent on her computer, the slightest hint of a grin at the corner of her mouth as she reaches up to adjust her bright pink-blue-yellow headscarf.

Lance swallows and follows his new boss deeper into the halls of the building, loosening his strangling tie and praying that this isn’t the reflection of what every future day working here would look like.

***

The training of the first day ends up with Lance getting belittled left and right by Lotor (though when Lance calls him Lotor, the man merely lifts his upper lip and doesn’t even deign to look at him until Lance corrects himself to _sir_ or _Mr. Galra_ ). File clerk doesn’t sound like a difficult job title, but apparently Lance is doing every mind-numbing step wrong when he transfers the basement full of paperwork to the electronic filing system. No matter what he does.

“Are you a complete idiot?” Lotor asks in a dangerous voice for the millionth time from behind him as Lance turns to sort a paper into its proper tray. Lance sucks his now bitten raw lower lip between his teeth and stops, staring at the ground.

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“Type up the label first, you absolutely useless imbecile.” The tone is cutting as Lotor leans close to hiss it in his ear.

“Yes, sir,” Lance mutters as he starts to fill in another label field. It’s been hours. He gets the essentials, has begun to develop his own system for getting things done – has been picking things up pretty quickly, he thought.

“Your position is easily replaceable, McClain. Don’t give me _any_ reason to shorten your stay here, because I will take it,” the man sneers as he stalks away, to his probably much fancier desk upstairs.

Well, that’s been the common refrain of today.

He looks up to the other three desks down here – all female coworkers he got the briefest of brief introductions to, who apparently know how to do their jobs so much better than him, and seem to share glances and snickers each time he gets chewed out.

Like they’re doing now. The trim woman with dark hair and navy blue lipstick is leaning on the desk of the broadly-built woman who looks like she could knock out Lance with a flick of her littlest finger. Navy Blue is whispering in Muscles’ ear as the bigger woman’s shoulders shake with suppressed laughter. Two pairs of eyes dart over to him, and they laugh some more. Even the slip of the woman in the corner with a service dog at her feet, who hasn’t spoken a word to anyone all day, looks up at him with the opposite of sympathy in her eyes.

Lance forces himself to look away and shake it off. His back hurts from leaning over file cabinets, scanners and desks and his face feels hot and he feels a pressure behind his eyes.

 _It’s a job, it’s a job,_ he repeats to himself, unconvincingly. One of the few that he was qualified for, without a degree to speak of.

When his phone buzzes with his alarm for heading out to pick up Lili, it’s a relief. He lurches up from his desk.

“Thank you,” he blurts to Lotor, who’s coming back down the stairs, and nearly runs out of the room, barely hearing the “don’t be late tomorrow!” that follows him.

He’s early to the bus, slouches on the tiny metal bench and stretches. Everything hurts. He’s…so tired.

If this was almost a half day, what will full days be like?

***

Lance may hug Lili longer than usual when he catches her, running into his arms and already chattering his ear off about her new friends and teachers and schoolwork. His shoulders may slump a bit, his smile a little harder than usual to keep up. But he takes her hand and laughs when she wants him to and listens, all the way home.

Except the next day is the same – berating, sharp critique of his ability to perform his job – and again, he pushes back the tired tears and tries to focus while Lili talks as they walk back home. Listens while he thinks about the little store he’s noticed a few blocks away, the grocery list, the weather. Anything but work.

It’s his fault, really, for not reminding Lili to pay attention, to focus, to notice their route on the way back.

Hindsight is 20/20.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [art here](http://smol-bara.tumblr.com/post/178288565016/here-are-my-pieces-that-i-drew-for-the-klance-big) by [smol-bara](http://smol-bara.tumblr.com/)! There's also another picture in that post that is from a future chapter fyi!  
>  but did u know my artist is tALENTED wow look @ that pic  
> -  
> yo i said i would update weekly but also i'm fuckin weak so here is chap 3 early (technically chap 1) bc i figured out my Major Plot Issue i was having i think! (i hope) (otherwise i have to go back and continue revising this and future chapters some more ugh)  
> (also i kno it's annoying but tbh i am highkey in a depressive funk rn and comments would help 2 part the clouds if y'all have feedback!! i just....am very excited for this story bc i've been working on it for like...8+ months and i really hope people like it as much as i do??? but also i think i just keep bouncin around my own headspace of nah it's terrible?)  
> anyway ignore my rambling i'll update again soon hopefully!


	4. A Pretty Smile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahh i'm sorry to y'all who were so pissed about the cliffhanger tbh i'm overly dramatic af about these things so don't worry! this particular angst is relatively minor!!  
> the real shit.....is coming later...... (^～^)

Keith fights back a yawn and yanks up his hair into probably the messiest ponytail he’s ever made. He flexes his feet through worn sneakers as he walks and wonders why he thought going out after work would be a good idea. It isn’t. He has a problem. But god, a drink had sounded good after getting yelled at for a solid two hours by an old couple who got their three PM omelets five minutes too late – never mind that Shay’s Diner doesn’t serve omelets past eleven.

He’s okay with his job. Well, actually, it’s…kind of great, really. Taking it has been one of the better moves he’s made in his entire lifetime, thanks to Shiro’s insistence that his friends need to be Keith’s friends too.

At first Keith had written it off as Shiro just trying to get him to socialize, except also Shiro’s friend Hunk “is maybe possibly trying to hire a new waiter for his restaurant,” that his other friend Pidge would “make a great coworker and they’d probably bond over those ridiculous conspiracy theories of Keith’s,” and that Hunk’s girlfriend (and the diner’s namesake) was “absolutely lovely” when she came in to help out. And, of course, there were others that Keith already knew, like Shiro’s old school friend Matt – Pidge’s brother – and Shiro’s girlfriend Allura and her uncle Coran liked to eat lunch there a lot.

And honestly, after enough badgering and lack of other options, Keith had taken the job, bitten the bullet. And somehow – he’d actually become friends with all of these people he’d thought had been overly hyped. Or something like friends. They smile at him, make jokes in his presence, even tease him good-naturedly sometimes. He awkwardly tries and fails to reciprocate sometimes.

The closest he can probably get to a friend, being the…way he is.

But yelling. He still can’t deal with yelling.

He stumbles a little, catches himself just barely. Why had he decided to walk?

 _Because drunk driving will kill you,_ says a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like a disapproving Shiro. _Especially on that deathtrap of a motorcycle._

Keith huffs and shoves his fists into his jacket pockets. He’s an adult, he can make his own decisions without his brother playing his goddamn subconscious shoulder angel.

 _Would a true adult really be saying something like that?_ wonders a much snider version of the voice, and Keith kicks an empty beer can into a brick wall.

He hadn’t even had that much fun. He snorts. _Imagine_. Getting shitfaced, a chore. If sixteen-year-old Keith could see himself now.

He isn’t drunk, not really. Just tipsy enough to warm himself up in the cooling evening air. It takes too much to get him drunk nowadays, and he saves his money for really bad days when he has to get lost in something or he’ll lose himself.

He looks up to the darkening sky and takes a deep breath. Kind of needs his lungs to be burning right now, starts to fumble for the pack in his back pocket when he hears it. A snuffling.

At first, he thinks maybe it’s a raccoon, maybe it’s a cat in the alley. Only there’s a voice bleeding into the next shaky breath, a tiny high sob.

God, is that a _person_?

“Hello?” He steps into the mouth of the alley warily, hand on his knife in his pocket. He knows all too well how these things can go. He wasn’t born yesterday.

A gasp and a scuffle. A little pastel blue shirt and a…ruffled skirt?

“Uh…” A…girl. A tiny girl. He doesn’t know children; he can’t say how old, but she has to be under ten.

He stares, frozen for a minute. She sniffles, rubbing the heel of her palm into her eye. Her face is streaked with tears, dark hair a halo around her head in the street lights. She’s shaking, both with sobs and maybe the cold? It seems like it’s cold out, his tingling limbs registering a slight chill, goosebumps prickling up when he starts to tug off his favorite red jacket.

Shit, how did you talk to kids? Let alone crying ones? “Um…what’s wrong?” He almost tries to add a pet name or something, but his throat closes around a word like _sweetheart_.

“Would you, uh, like – here. You look cold,” he mumbles, holds his jacket out to her. “Are you lost?” he adds as an afterthought when she doesn’t immediately respond.

The girl is still in slight shadow as she eyes him cautiously, inching forward to take the coat. She looks up at him and slowly nods.

“You _are_ lost? Where are you trying to go? Your parents aren’t around?” Keith turns to peer across the street, searching for frantic passersby. This girl looks like the type to have an actually functioning family. Hopefully didn’t grow up the way he did.

But hell, what does he know? Maybe he just can’t see that dark, hopeless dullness through the tears still filling her eyes.

“Home,” is managed in a sudden whimper, and Keith looks down at her. She’s so small, wrapped in his jacket. What is he even supposed to do with a kid this small?

It’s absurd how close the feeling in his stomach is to panic. He doesn’t _do_ kids.

He rubs sweaty palms down the sides of his jeans and crouches down to meet very wet brown eyes, on her level now, and swallows. “Well, uh, can you describe what home looks like?”

She thinks. “A-apartment,” she hiccups. “I don’t – don’t know my address yet.” Her face screws up. “Papa told me, but I don’t remember!” The last syllable becomes a wail, and Keith feels the start of true panic setting in.

He holds out his hands to try to pacify, feels his head spin a little. Damn, he wishes he was fully sober right about now.

“I’m Keith,” he says stupidly in a pause when she runs out of breath.

“I’m Li-li-Lili-ana,” she puffs.

“Do you know your parents’ phone numbers, maybe?” he asks hopefully, then remembers the hours-dead phone in his pocket, so it doesn’t matter when she shakes her head. He can’t even call 911.

“Okay, Liliana, uh.” Keith tries to think. There are apartments all around here, each with similar brick faces. Something else, a visual, a landmark. A landmark she’d know. Some blocks from here – a playset, swings and a jungle gym he swears he’s seen populated by kids her age during one of his rare walks around outside.

“Rowan Park?” he asks. “If we go to the park, would you know how to get home from there?”

Hesitantly, she nods, and for once during this whole interaction, his stomach isn’t completely in his shoes as he stands up. “Okay, let’s go.”

Quite suddenly, there’s a tiny hand inserting itself into his. He jumps a little, looks down at her. But she’s already tugging onward, tears dried up in favor of a determined expression.

Why is _he_ more scared of _her_ than she is of him?

Heading through the street, he realizes what a picture they paint. She, in essentially a tutu, clearly not half an hour out from crying, swimming in his much-too-big leather jacket. He, tattoos winding their way down his bared biceps, a stud in his lip, a bar and hoops in his ears, a scruffy mess in all blacks and grays. Nervously, he eyes fellow pedestrians as they pass. They look him up and down – and normally he doesn’t give a fuck, welcomes and challenges their stares with a glare. But he’s got an interesting companion now, and the judgement is suddenly flicking between him and his…baby duckling of a tail, still holding tightly to his fingers. He hasn’t felt this self-conscious in years.

 _Shit_ , what if her parents freak out when they see him? He’s nowhere near the child rescuer type, probably would appear like more of a threat to the tiny girl than anything else, and god does it make everything – the dryness of his mouth and the fluttering of his stomach and the shaking of his free hand before he curls it into a fist – much, much worse. How do you pass as a not-fucked-up-human? If there was any time he needed to know, it was now.

“So, uh,” he interrupts his own thoughts as they putter to a stop at the start of the path into the park – part fenced in field for dogs, a walking trail, and a small unoccupied playset. “We’re here. Do you remember where to go?”

Liliana screws up her face and turns in a circle, but she doesn’t let go of Keith, pulling him in her whirl.

“Yes! It’s this way!” And his arm is nearly yanked out of his socket as they take off.

The apartments flashing by as she flies down the street are similar enough to each other that _Keith_ is feeling pretty lost, but Liliana seems to know where she’s going now.

“ _Papa!_ ”

There’s a man slumped on the front steps of a particularly rundown building, phone to his ear, his unoccupied hand pressed to his face. He looks up at her screech, jumping to his feet, and hurriedly says something into his phone as he shoves it into his pocket.

The moment his eyes land on her, he’s running. He nearly knocks her over in his rush to clutch her close and Keith’s jacket slides off her shoulders as she hugs back.

“Lili! Oh fuck, oh god, _bebé_ , I was so worried.”

“ _Mala palabra, Papá_ ,” chides Liliana into his shoulder.

He draws back, grinning at her through red, clearly still streaming eyes, and taps the tip of her nose. “You’re right, _corazón_. It is a bad word. _Lo siento_. What happened?”

“I got lost,” says Liliana guiltily. Her fingers have woven their way around handfuls of his shirt, and as he stands up and pulls her up to his hip, she buries her face in his neck. He seems to absently rub her back as his gaze falls on Keith for the first time.

“Did you bring her back?”

Keith swallows and nods and Liliana shifts in her father’s arms to whisper into his ear, then hides once more.

The man’s eyes sharpen and he asks, “Keith?”

“Y-yeah,” Keith manages. His throat feels kind of tight as he watches the two. He doesn’t know why.

“Come on, Lili, thank him and head to bed, all right? The door’s unlocked.” Her father lets her down and ushers her towards Keith. Lili looks up at Keith, suddenly shy again, hands twined into her skirt frills.

“Thank you,” she whispers, then turns and starts to trot inside, stopping only to receive a squeeze and a kiss from her father before she’s gone.

As the door closes behind her, the man’s shoulders slump and he reaches a shaking hand for his eyes. “Thank you,” he repeats quietly. “So much. Lili is all I have, I just…” He stops and laughs – through tears, it sounds like. His hand drops and Keith sees that yes, he is crying and he peers up at Keith. “You probably think I’m super irresponsible. Stupid young dad loses his daughter by sending her alone to school, it’s just, uh, hard sometimes.” A pause for a gulp. “I don’t know –”

“No,” interrupts Keith hurriedly. “I don’t think that.”

The man blinks at him and smiles, a little tremulously, as her wipes his face on his sleeve. “I’m Lance. And thank you, really.” His eyes fall to Keith’s coat, still in a pile on the ground, and he picks it up. “You gave her your jacket?”

Keith nods. “She was cold.” He takes the jacket from Lance, slings it over his arm and digs his hands into his pockets awkwardly. He feels compelled to say more, he’s never been a talker, but – “I, uh, get it.”

Lance raises a skeptical eyebrow at him. “What, do you have a kid?”

“No, no, I get really trying, and it being hard, you know?”

Lance has stopped crying, but his introspective gaze as he looks away and nods seems sad.

There’s quiet for enough time that Keith starts to feel an itch under his skin, slides his fingers into his back pocket to rest over his cigarettes again, goes so far as to slide one out and palm it before looking back up at the man standing in front of him. Lance’s brow is furrowed, thumbnail between his teeth, his eyes empty.

“She really is cute, though. A good kid,” falls from Keith’s lips before he can think about it. Lance looks up at him, the creases between his eyebrows falling away, and suddenly, the sweetest, proudest smile is utterly transforming his face.

Keith’s mouth goes dry as the tear-reddened eyes sparkle, and Lance seems to blossom.

“Isn’t she?” Lance sighs, and Keith drops his cigarette.

 _Fuck._ He’s hot.

This stranger in front of him has just finished what has to have been at least an hour-long crying jag, yet he’s _still attractive_. Keith tries to prevent his automatic re-evaluative checking out, but he can’t.

Lance is tall, lanky, doesn’t have the muscles that Keith’s usual type does. But his smile – even amidst a tearstained, puffy face – is captivating, his blue eyes – even bloodshot – are beautifully soft. Keith is suddenly all too aware of his ratty clothes, and crosses his arms nervously as he nods. “Yeah, you seem like you – you did good,” he says lamely, and his thoughts race.

God, what is he doing? This guy has a kid, is probably married to some nice girl – his eyes flash to the long fingers of Lance’s left hand. His ring finger is empty. Okay, a girlfriend?

Well, he isn’t gay. Probably not. Liliana looks like him, after all, adorably so. The same soft looking brown skin, dark hair. Lance’s shorter hair seems like it has the potential for curls too.

Lance is looking at him expectantly. He’d said something, but Keith had been too busy mooning over him like a lovestruck teenager.

“What?” he asks, flushing.

Lance smiles again, more of a grin this time. “I said thanks, again. And I asked if there was any way I could repay you.”

“No, it’s, it’s fine.” Keith tries to politely start backing away. He should leave, probably, before he does some stupid shit like coming onto Lance when he’s basically as good as a stranger, possibly taken, and probably straight as hell.

Lance’s brow creases. “Wait, I – listen, I think I have some beer somewhere, you could come in and have some? Just, something. It’s the least I can do. I want to thank you properly.”

Keith pauses. Beer sounds…nice. Good. It probably won’t actually _do_ much, but hey, he won’t turn down free booze.

But also, this is the part where he should just head off, shouldn’t he? He’s done his good deed for the year, helping a crying kid. And there’s a reason Keith’s modes around people tend to be sullen, awkward, or trying to get some (whether that “some” be drinks, drugs, or sex). He doesn’t really know how to handle social situations – and this is one of the strangest he’s run across.

He still finds himself nodding gruffly, folding his arms tighter as Lance’s face clears in relief and he turns to lead Keith in. Really, though, this guy has a kid – they feel like they’re in completely different stages of life, what are they going to talk about over beer, even?

A pretty smile and his weak heart is swayed into a stranger’s apartment? God, Keith is just too fucking gay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't worry abt it keith i too am 2 gay 2 function lots of the time... i just don't get any of anything  
> .....listen i was just writing some stuff for the future of this fic and now i'm like..........,,,screaming bc u know when u get that....pERFECT idea that just ties everything together and is romantic and cheesy and good well i had that and it's much too late because my artist has already completed their beautiful art of this story so i only get to see it in my head but now i have a Good Scene that's gonna come up....eventually...........god i overexcite myself over this nerd shit


	5. Drinking Memories

Lance can’t stop the shaky jitters as he opens the door to 703 and begins an anxious round of the apartment – check on Lili, try each window’s lock, run a hand over the secret lump of not much emergency cash at the side of his mattress, Lili again, and run to lock the door. He can feel the stranger’s eyes on him as he flits in and out of the main room, curious and ever-so-slightly judgmental.

“Beer,” Lance tries to say briskly, as if he hasn’t just run around his entire apartment like a madman. It comes out more trembly than he intended as he waves the man over to his pathetic little living room – complete with his own bed shoved into the corner.

He’s still got anxious adrenaline thrumming through his body, but he can feel how close he is to coming down, to being drained completely of it – and along with it, everything else. About to tip into complete emptiness.

He tries to bustle to the cabinets, pulling out two cans of some cheap brand – one of the scant self-indulgent purchases he’d allowed himself in his grocery run. The bustling ends up being more like an awkward fast walk. Sitting heavily down on the couch next to Keith, he slides a drink over to Keith’s elbow.

The man reaches to pick it up and inspect it doubtfully, turning it over in his hands.

“You a connoisseur?” Lance snorts.

Gray eyes flick to him. Lance feels nervous. Keith’s eyes are piercing, framed by his dark hair. They look like they can see through him.

“Nah, I just drink enough to know this is literally the cheapest beer they sell at the corner store.”

Oh. Well. Maybe it was the _cheapest_ brand.

Lance clears his throat, ducking his head. “I don’t buy alcohol a lot. Kind of a waste of money when I could be spending it on food. And when there’s no one but me to drink it.”

The gaze hasn’t strayed from his face when he looks up. “What, Liliana’s mom doesn’t drink?”

Lance hears his own breath – like he’s been shot, he’s so goddamn dramatic, isn’t he, but it hurts like a stab in the chest. It’s been years and it _still hurts_. He’s holding loose fingers, cold sweat staining his skin.

_They met at a bar._

Keith immediately backpedals, turning away, voice suddenly quiet. “That was rude as hell, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have.”

Lance manages a grin…fake, but passable, probably. “Nope. Just me and Lili here.”

Keith pops open the tab and fiddles with it, his tone lilting with an obvious attempt at lightness. “Not holding any parties?”

A fake laugh – Lance wouldn’t do well as an actor, would he? “We’re new here, man, moved here last week. So, no, no friends to invite to a party. Why, do _you_ know where all the parties are?”

It’s quiet as Keith continues to turn the beer in his hands before taking a drink. He lowers it back to his lap and regards it with an enigmatic expression. “I try not to.”

Lance doesn’t know what on earth _that_ means, but as he looks over the other man, he can’t help the comment slipping out in a tired jumble. “You look like you would.”

Maybe he’s too straight-laced, but he doesn’t go out anymore. For plenty of reasons. What would he even do?

Keith, though. He wouldn’t have any trouble believing Keith does – the piercings, the tattoos, the look in his eyes. It helps that when Keith had passed him on the way to the couch, Lance could smell some kind of strong alcohol coming off him. He shouldn’t judge – he isn’t, really – but he can’t remember knowing anyone like Keith. Definitely not at home, not in college. Just the occasional stoner, anywhere from hippie to rebel, that attended class only sometimes. Lance had never been very aware of any of them in the first place. He’d tried his hand at partying before Lili. But never after.

Keith’s jaw is tightening, his can crinkling in his hands as he starts to crush it. Lance blinks at him, but Keith’s face is blank. “Nope. I don’t do shit. Just work, that’s about all I do nowadays.”

“Yeah? Me too.” Lance sighs and slumps back against the couch, finally opening his own can that’s been forgotten in his hand, dripping condensation onto his pants leg. Here it is, the crash. His limbs feel like lead, his head filled with cotton. “It’d be nice if I had time for…anything else.” He laughs sleepily, bitterly. Can feel his words starting to run together a little, his mouth run away with him, with too much information that a stranger wouldn’t have the remotest sense of context for. “For Lili. I mean, god, that’s why she got lost – I work so much _for_ her and I can’t even be there to take her to or from school.”

Keith’s eyebrow lifts, face still blank in profile as he tips back his slightly crumpled can. He probably isn’t very interested in this topic. Through a weary gray haze, Lance feels a little guilty – Keith doesn’t care about Kid Talk, he has a life that isn’t revolving around a single little girl. No one Lance’s age is ever interested in Kid Talk, he should know better.

“So you need a babysitter or something?”

Lance sips at his beer. He’s had this conversation with himself before. “Wish I could afford it.”

“Get someone you can afford. I’m sure there are teenagers willing to make an extra buck even if it’s not much.”

Lance lets his head roll back against the back of the couch, back to Keith, trying not to sound irritated. It’s a pleasant idea, and a nice attempt at fixing Lance’s problem that doesn’t need to be Keith’s, but not realistic. “Where am I meeting those teenagers that I have to trust with my six-year-old? I don’t know _anyone_ around here.”

Keith meets his eyes in silence. His gaze flicks away and he reaches to rub at the back of his neck.

“You know me.”

Lance blinks, dry lips parting. “You found my lost daughter and I gave you ‘the cheapest alcohol at the corner store.’ I was under the impression you weren’t planning on calling me an acquaintance after this, much less find me a babysitter.”

Keith shrugs. Like it’s no big deal. “When do you need help?”

“You gonna call up somebody now?” Lance huffs in an exhausted imitation of a laugh. “She has school from eight to three. I’m definitely walking her to school in the mornings now, no matter what my boss says, but I’ll probably have to work even later to make up for it.” He fights the shudder, blinks away annoying tears and clears his throat – he needs to stop crying, Jesus. “So, I mean, someone to pick her up and bring her home, maybe stay until I get back – probably after six. You could find somebody that could make that timeframe?”

Keith licks his lips, seems to consider, pauses several times before – “Give me your number.”

Lance stares. “What?”

“I’ll, uh, see who I can find. And in the meantime, you’ll know somebody nearby.”

“You’d want to keep in contact with me after I vomited up all of my issues on you, a stranger?” Lance feels too slow. Keith has done so much for him already, yet here he is, offering up even more.

Keith shrugs and looks at him again. Lance nearly starts as the corner of Keith’s mouth flicks up and his eyes flicker with amusement. Damn, that’s…the first time he’s smiled?

“I don’t know, if you keep this up, it’ll make for more excitement than I’ve had in a long time.”

 

Wow. How dumb is Keith, though?

 _“I’ll see who I can find”?_ He doesn’t know any more local teenagers than Lance does!

The other man had seen him off with a smile that carried a tinge too much relief, which makes Keith feel guilty as the much cooler night air cloaks him. He tugs up his collar as he stares down at the number scribbled on his hand, definitely not sulking because he’s an idiot. Who is he going to pull out of his ass? He only knows his coworkers, Shiro, and the Alteas.

That’s the extent of his social circle, and not one of them would be available. Everyone has to work, or, in Pidge’s case, go to classes.

Unless…

***

Shay’s Diner is bustling when Keith pushes in around 11:50. The classic black and white tiled floors squeak with people coming to and fro, and the comfortably worn, sunshine yellow booths are almost entirely full.

“’Sup, Emo?” Pidge, his excessively tiny and nerdy coworker on the end of their morning shift, snaps the towel hanging from their apron at him, snorting when Keith scowls and rubs at his arm. They go back to wiping down the table and start to motion for a family waiting by the door to come sit down. “You gotta get working, we’re swamped, and Matt and Nyma haven’t shown up yet.”

“Well, I gotta talk to Hunk first.”

“He’s not hard to find, dude.” They tug out some menus to hand to the parents. “In the kitchen, like he always is. Probably making out with his beloved.”

Keith can’t help the slight grimace at the mental picture – he doesn’t really like to think about Hunk and Shay’s relationship in any terms but innocent and pure.

Pidge cackles at the look. “Don’t worry, Keith, they don’t have time for that right now. Like I said, we’re swamped. They’re too busy mixing milkshakes.”

Thankfully, when he sticks his head into the kitchen, Pidge is close enough to right. Shay is arranging salads with large, careful hands and Hunk is frying up some burgers on the grill, a wrinkle of concentration between his eyes.

Keith snags his own apron from beside the door and clears his throat. “Hunk.”

Hunk looks up, his smile rushed, but genuine all the same. “Keith? Good you’re in, it’s a mess out there. What’s up?”

He’s kind of nervous, oddly. Hopes Hunk doesn’t ask _why_. “Sorry, I, uh, was just wondering…”

“Yeah, bud?” Hunk turns to pull a basket of crisping fries from their oil, shaking them out, while Keith stews in his own thoughts for a few minutes too long.

“I wanted to…switch out my shifts? Could I do that?”

“Uh…” Hunk tosses out burger toppings to a couple of plates like a dance, half-listening. Another pause. “What to? What works better for you?”

“Mornings? I could help you out in the mornings?”

“Like, _opening_ shift?” Hunk sounds a little incredulous and peers over his shoulder after a minute, which isn’t ridiculous. Keith has always been notoriously anti-early-bird-gets-the-worm. He doesn’t get out of bed until at least ten or eleven nowadays – as in, usually later and _never_ earlier.

“Yep.” Keith swallows. He can figure out how to wake up at five am. Eventually. Probably.

“I mean…” Hunk scratches his chin, thinking. “Yeah, I think I can work that, starting next week. You sure you can handle the schedule change?”

Keith can’t help the snort as he pulls back his hair, pushing open the kitchen doors to head back into the fray. “I’ll…make it work.”

He ducks into the bathroom after Matt and Nyma show up to help and together, they whittle down the waiting customers until they finally have a chance to breathe. Leaning against the sink, he writes and rewrites his text maybe six times to the number newly programmed into his phone. But if he’s completely honest, the rewriting count is – probably closer to ten.

Basically, he writes out a lot, and then deletes everything, wiping sweaty hands on his apron, and stares at the empty textbox.

Minimalistic is best, right? No need to freak the guy out.

_[Keith Kogane]: Hey, it’s Keith. Babysitting is go._

He rethinks it right after he sends it. He should have explained more. That was kind of a dorky way to phrase it. But he doesn’t want to babble. But Lance will need details. Oh, he’s an idiot.

It takes a while for Lance to reply – several hours, actually. And it’s not like Keith is waiting. It’s basically a business transaction. It’s not like he fumbles and almost spills water across the table he’s waiting when his phone buzzes several times in his pocket, silenced. Or like he rushes to take his break right after, Matt shooting him a raised eyebrow from across the floor.

_[Lance]: really?? that was so quick_

_[Lance]: who, how much_

_[Lance]: & when can i meet them bc i’m about to get fired a week into my job if i can’t make my hours_

_[Keith Kogane]: Well, I can do it. And I’m good without compensation, you don’t have to pay me._

There. His stomach is still fluttering nervously but he’s said it.

Immediately, Lance starts typing, stops periodically. It takes…way too long for his response.

_[Lance]: KEITH_

_[Lance]: THAT’S_

_[Lance]: i can’t!! i have to pay you oh my god_

_[Keith Kogane]: I really can’t take your money after hearing how tight it is for you right now._

_[Lance]: jesus christ_

_[Lance]: i gave you BEER_

_[Lance]: in exchange for bringing me my DAUGHTER_

_[Lance]: there’s no way this type of trade can continue it’s not fair i’m gonna be indebted to you for life_

Keith’s mouth is dry with a kind of shame. It’s pretty scummy to just be doing favors because he has the hots for this guy.

_[Keith Kogane]: Seriously it’s fine._

It’s not that he’s _expecting_ like…the kind of not-relationship he’d strike up with any hot guy he met at a bar. He just…wouldn’t mind it. And, if the chance presented itself, the opportunity to flirt with Lance would be cool. Get a feel for how open he is to the possibility of…

“What, fuckbuddies?” Keith mumbles at himself. He sounds sleazy to _himself_. He sounds like – like –

_[Lance]: please keith_

He isn’t _him_. This isn’t gonna be like that.

_[Keith Kogane]: Okay. But like just five bucks per or something. I can start next week._

There. He isn’t going in expecting anything. Lance doesn’t owe him anything.

_[Lance]: crap i really really have to go but really_

_[Lance]: thank you so so much man_

_[Lance]: i’m not religious but my mama would say u have to be an angel sent by god or something_

Keith inhales sharply and throws his phone across the breakroom, away from himself, and then immediately has to run after it to make sure his battered case hasn’t finally failed him. It’s a good thing Pidge left hours ago, or they’d be rolling on the floor howling at his red face.

Shit. This is already starting to sound like the worst idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *keeps ending on "keith is gay" notes bc i can*  
> anyway if u leave me comments about my children i'll love you for it, comments keep me goin in this cruel world  
> if u leave an essay on my fic in the comments u get a coupon for my hand in marriage


	6. Breathe

It’s Monday, three PM, and the elementary school is looming before Keith, entirely too frightening to him for it to house a bunch of six-year-olds. He wipes sweaty hands on his pants and reminds himself he just has to go up and say he’s picking up Liliana McClain, Lance called ahead to say he was coming. That’s all. Everything’s good.

What is so wrong with him that he feels terror seize him more with every child he passes on his way to the double doors is…questionable.

He knows the kid, he met her. It’ll be fine.

It’s not fine, though, when he mumbles his way through his rehearsed speech to a teacher, when she smiles and nods and calls, “Lili!” and Liliana’s little curly head pops into view. She fiddles with a strap of her tiny pair of pink overalls and kind of half-smiles up at him as she trots to his side, her ponytail swinging, a plaid blue backpack hanging from one shoulder.

He tries to smile as well, doesn’t quite make it, and awkwardly clears his throat, digging his hands into his pockets. “You ready to go?”

She nods and readjusts her backpack, eyes dropping to the ground, still quiet, but he gets the picture quickly.

“Ah, you want me to – would you like me to carry your backpack?”

She nods again, and he thinks the shy smile is actually real on her face as he pulls the bag onto his own shoulder and starts leading her outside.

They walk side by side in complete silence, Keith feeling every moment of it with edgy anxiousness, until they’re mounting the interior steps of her apartment building, and Keith realizes –

“You have a key, right?” He looks down at her as she hops up the stairs, passing him quickly. She twirls around to eye him, hands folded behind her back and she nods again before dropping to start climbing on all fours. A bark of laughter escapes him to his own surprise as she scrambles upward.

When they arrive at 703, both puffing, she turns to him, chewing on the end of her ponytail but eyes shining, like she heard him laughing.

He can’t help but smile back at her. “Key?”

She points at the backpack dangling from his arm, and he fumbles in the front pocket before coming up with it.

The apartment is much the same as it had been last week – a couple boxes still scattered around, an odd mix of empty-and-messy, and most curiously, a full bed in the corner of the living room.

Liliana heads straight to the fridge to take out a cheese stick that she chomps down on, leaving Keith hovering by the door.

The nerves are trickling back into his stomach, and he rubs his thumbs over her backpack straps as he continues to survey the place – mostly for _something_ to do.

He’s scared. Of kids. What a stupid fear.

But also. What if he fucks up? Like, a lot?

Little fingers on his as he looks down to her taking back his distraction and she eyes him, still chewing.

“W-what do you like to do, after school?” Her bedtime is seven, that’s about all he knows from Lance. He probably should have asked for some kind of advice for all of this. He hadn’t really been…you know, _thinking_ about what he was actually promising to do for the guy he was drooling over.

What if he makes some colossal mistake and just…scars her for life?

The rationality of this thought is next to nil considering he has _zero_ ideas about how he could pull something like that, but…

She’s just…so _small_ as she looks up at him, big brown eyes cautiously trusting. And he’s a rough-around-the-edges adult who doesn’t even know how to take care of himself, let alone a tiny dependent being that’s so easily breakable.

And, maybe…maybe he didn’t really _get_ this innocent period when he was her age. Maybe he can still taste blood in his mouth from a childhood that’s haunted him for years.

So carefully, he tries to tamp down the fear, inhales and crouches to her level, working a patient smile onto his face as he nods for her to speak.

She chews on her fingers and says, “Read.”

And she takes the hand he gingerly offers, she leads him to the half-occupied bookshelf in the corner of her room filled with cardboard boxes, selects _Where The Sidewalk Ends_ , and pulls him back to the living room – where she cross-leggedly sits on the opposite side of the couch from him, indicating that he show her the pictures.

So Keith reads.

_If you are a dreamer, come in,_

_If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,_

_A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer..._

_If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire_

_For we have some flax-golden tales to spin._

_Come in!_

_Come in!_

 

Lance’s eyelids are drooping shut as he picks at his keyboard blankly, and he has to pause and turn away from the computer screen, pressing the heels of his palms into his aching eye sockets. It feels like he’s been working this soul-sucking job for months now, but it’s only his second Monday here. Jesus Christ.

He needs…some caffeine, for a start. So that he doesn’t fall asleep at his desk, so close to the end of the day. And even the empty, uninspiring walls of the kitchen will be a welcome change from the desk-to-printer area he walks every day that he’s quickly come to despise.

He almost spills when he overfills his cup, and actually _does_ spill a little on the counter when a sudden voice behind him makes him jump.

“Lotor wants to see you.”

It’s Navy Blue – Acxa, if Lance remembers correctly. Unsmiling, like all of his coworkers when they interact with him.

“Right now? W-what for?” He wipes at the counter nervously, his stomach suddenly churning.

She raises an uncaring eyebrow as she turns away, shrugging, and he looks down at his full cup, wondering how to chug it through a throat that’s completely closed up.

***

Ezor the receptionist smirks at him as he passes her. It isn’t friendly.

Lance’s footsteps are too loud. His heart is going a mile a minute. He feels shaky.

Breathing is a chore at this point as he approaches the door labelled _Lotor Galra_ and prepares to get the dressing down of his life. Only before he can even make to reach for the handle, Lance slams into a body as the door opens and Lotor steps through. As Lance drops his mug, everything in it goes all over the other man’s suit and Lance barely has time to gasp before –

 _Crash. Slap_.

The mug shatters on the floor, Lotor backhands him and Lance stumbles back, clutching at his stinging cheek.

“I was going into a meeting with our boss.” Cold, uncaring. Lotor looks as cool as ever as he brushes down wet, stained fabric. “And I was going to ask if you had anything to say for yourself – not working the hours required of you this last week – so that I could tell Zarkon _something_ in your defense.”

“I – I – told you, it was only going to be that week, I’ve made arrangements now, I –” Lance breathes.

Lotor doesn’t look at him as he steps away. “I’m no longer asking.”

Lance stands in his own mess, his chest seizing kind of funnily for a few moments of Lotor’s clipped footsteps and the final comment tossed over his shoulder as the man leaves.

“Look forward to your pay being cut.”

***

Lance feels off-kilter as he approaches his apartment door, fumbles his keys too many times, almost drops them when the door opens on its own and he looks up with another spell of dizziness to –

Keith, right. It’s…the first day of babysitting. He’s here to help out.

“Hey.” Keith runs a hand through his hair and steps aside, the slightest ghost of something that might be a smile crossing his face. “We were reading some books. She was really good, she’s brushing her teeth now.”

“Good,” Lance manages, trying to keep the trembling that seems to be wracking his body down to a minimum as he closes the door behind him and tries to take a deep breath, flexing his hands and wrapping his arms around himself. “Thanks, uh…” He’s not going to fly into a million pieces, he’s just fine. Lili’s just fine. Everything’s just fine.

Maybe he should…drink some water or something, and then…find some cash, for Keith, because he needs to –

Wow, it would be easier to walk if he didn’t feel so fucking…

“Hey?” The voice is worried, in his ear. “Uh, you okay?”

Lance exhales shakily. He’s braced himself on the counter, and he raises a trembling, tingling hand to his chest. His heart won’t stop racing. He’s –

“What do you need?”

Lance tries to direct his eyes up to the man standing next to him, only partially succeeds.

“Breathe,” he hears. “Should I – can I touch you? Hey. Come here, come on, sit down. Lance, _you need to breathe_.”

Soft fingers on his arms, helping him sink down to the ground. He tries to gasp deep breaths, chokes instead.

“Can you look at me?” He’s directed by those hand cupping his face, he looks into gray eyes. “Listen. Breathe in…”

He does.

“Breathe out.”

He’s shaking, falling, dying.

He fixes himself on the face in front of him and keeps breathing, obeying the quiet commands, until the fear seizing his entire body starts to trickle away. Nonsensically, he thinks that it’s a nice face. Keith has a nice face, when the perpetual kind of scowl he seems to have as a resting expression is gone. Even if it’s replaced with fear. But if it was a smile – well, that would be –

He’s left trembling and drained on the cold kitchen floor. Keith is still crouched in front of him, holding his face. Keith searches his eyes, seems to realize that he’s come out of it, and abruptly lets go, raising his hands nervously as his own eyes widen.

“You good?” he asks, slightly hoarsely.

Lance swallows and nods. “Sorry,” he whispers, because goddammit, Keith always has to deal with him being a mess.

“Does that happen a lot?” Keith asks, quietly. Lance watches him pull his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around his knees like a child. Withdrawing. It’s a strange picture – a man with piercings everywhere, muscular arms wrapped with tattoos in strange patterns, dark bangs falling in his face, yet looking so small. So tired. Did Lance make him look like that? Him and his problems.

“Sometimes.” Lance tries to stand as a rush of shame overtakes him, feeling like a newborn deer. Jesus. “Sorry.”

“You already said sorry.” Keith reaches out a hand to steady him, his face free of judgment as he studies Lance’s face. “Don’t worry about it. Everything’ll be okay.”

 

Keith watches in shock as Lance’s expression suddenly crumples again. Alarm brings him back up to his feet. “What’s wrong?!”

The man half turns away, trying to cover his face. “S-sorry, I just. That shouldn’t set me off,” he sniffles. “And I need to stop crying in front of you all the time, god.”

“No, seriously, what’s wrong?”

“Everything,” Lance hiccups wryly. “Should I list alphabetically, or start my sob-stories from the beginning?”

“Papa?”

Liliana has emerged from the bathroom – in the little shark-printed pajamas she quietly insisted Keith help her pick out – looking uncertain, evidently having started to head for her father when she noticed he was crying.

“ _Corazón!_ ” Lance musters up a smile and opens up his arms for her to run into without hesitation, and without any reserve of her own, she obliges.

Keith watches as any trace tension of the panic attack in Lance’s face melts as he hugs her to him, looking calm for the first time since walking through the door. Catches himself wondering wistfully, almost bitterly, how it feels to love that deeply. To feel that loved.

Lance’s eyes flutter open as he catches Keith’s gaze, a smile curving his lips. “She was good, you said? You were good for Keith?” He pulls back to search Liliana’s face, playfully skeptical. “Were you really?”

“ _Sí, Papa!_ ” she insists, and Lance laughs. Keith swallows at the sound.

 _“¿Qué dices, Lili?”_ Lance turns her in his grasp to face Keith, and Liliana looks up at him.

“ _Gracias.”_

“ _De nada_ ,” Keith tries, in probably a horrible accent, because Liliana actually giggles, teeth on full display as she smiles, and Keith…feels a little jump in his chest. Wants to make her laugh again.

But it isn’t until he looks up to make eye contact with her father that his breath is fully knocked away.

Lance is _looking_ at him, like he, too, heard that laugh as something more than it was, like Keith did something…amazing. It’s a moment before Lance seems to tear himself away and look down to Liliana, giving her a kiss on the head. “Bed. Sweet dreams.”

“Night, Papa.”

She’s off as Lance reaches for his pocket, pulling out a wallet before Keith can protest and thumbing through bills.

“You’re fine,” Keith tries, when Lance holds out money, but Lance shakes his head, his smile small but his eyes warm – Keith, too, feels warm.

“Take it,” Lance says, taking his hand to press the bill into it.

“Fine,” Keith concedes, letting his fingers wrap around it.

“Right. Well. Thank you.” Lance folds his arms, searching his face like he wants to say something, but doesn’t, merely pressing his lips together after a moment.

And Keith can’t stand for that.

He holds out the cash. “I’ll take the money. If…”

Lance raises a surprised, questioning eyebrow.

Keith takes a deep breath. “Tell me one of those sob-stories.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to the end of fully written chapters that just needed heavy editing  
> i have the basic outline of the rest & several scenes written throughout but nothin like these last chapters have been D:  
> here's hoping i can continue to attempt posting weekly but who knows lol


	7. Truth For Truth

Lance can’t help but wrap his arms around himself as he stares at Keith: endearingly adamant in the stubborn set of his jaw, the twenty Lance had pushed on him (that he doubts Keith has noticed) still outstretched.

A sob-story?

“You…you don’t need to hear it,” he mumbles, pushing Keith’s hand back to his side. “C’mon. All you’ve heard from me is whining.”

“But I don’t know anything about you. Other than Lili, it’s all a blank. _C’mon_ , Lance,” Keith echoes back to him, a challenge in his eyes. “If you can trust me with your daughter, you can trust me with a little background about yourself.”

“W-well what about you?” Lance counters, because he _has to_. “I have no clue what’s up with you either! I took it on faith that you’re a good person based on how we met, but…I don’t know! I don’t know you.”

Keith’s eyes shutter a little. It’s a heavy pause before he says, “Truth for truth.”

Lance chews on his lip and stares at his hands and picks at his nails and finally says, “Fine. What?”

Keith considers him and leans back against the door, folding his arms. “How’d you end up here?”

Well they can’t just stand here for… _all that_. Lance grabs Keith’s arm to drag him to the couch, pointedly ignoring the gratification in Keith’s eyes.

“I, uh…that’s really broad and honestly really long and you don’t want all of it, trust me.” He stares at his raw cuticles, ragged nails, searching for a point to start –

“Sure I do. Start at the beginning. This whole babysitting thing is gonna last for a while, after all. Right?”

Lance blinks at Keith.

Okay, maybe some of this – evasion – is stupid. Maybe it stems from a dumb fear about _people_ and _losing them_ and _getting too close_. But more rationally, he’s also just spent a lot of time burdening Keith with his own shit over the length of their acquaintance.

“Rant to me. I’ll return the favor,” Keith insists, so –

Lance…does.

***

It’s not about all the hardships, really, he tries to avoid them, but they keep coming back. He talks about his family in Cuba, his scholarship here. Mostly glosses over how he hasn’t been able to see any of them in years – nobody has the money to fly. How he never truly…got to finish school, how he just was stuck here, because when he had Lili, she became where his time and money had to go. How he misses college, dreams of going back because without that degree, he has no prospects of getting a better job – but without the better job, he has no prospects of affording college. And how he’d wanted that degree, so badly, had borrowed and bartered and worked his way into having his textbooks and his time for it all, for his family and future. Yet some of that bitterness slips through, bits and pieces of it sneak their way in as he speaks, harshness slipping through the cracks and tightening his throat with hard truth.

But he loves Lili, he says – can’t stop saying. Hugs a pillow to his chest because she’s asleep and he can’t hug her instead. He loves her so much, she’s everything to him, so it’s okay. He can dream, and know those dreams probably won’t happen, but it’s okay.

He doesn’t talk about Vi. He doesn’t talk about work. Doesn’t step anywhere near them. They’re…too much. Too personal, in a way that bragging about his sisters and talking about the degree he could have had isn’t.

He can’t.

When his babble of stream of consciousness slows to a trickle of one slow word after another and he actually looks at Keith for the first time, he doesn’t expect the intensity he finds in Keith’s stare – hand curled by his mouth, searching Lance’s face like if he looks for it hard enough, he’ll find answers to something profound and unfathomable.

Lance inches back, away from the gaze, heartbeat stuttering. “What?”

Keith seems to realize the force in his face too, turning his eyes to the creases of the old couch instead to consider. “You’re so…driven.”

“What?” Lance mumbles again, hiking his legs up to his chest to pull the pillow closer, drop his chin to his knees. He tries for a joking tone, a self-deprecating smirk. “I’m not. If anything, I’m failing at all the things I want to do.”

“I mean…” Keith looks frustrated now, like he can’t find words. “I’ve never…cared so much. About anything.”

“Nothing?” Lance asks, a slight shame churning his stomach. He’d talked so much to leave Keith to stew in…this. “No one? What about your family?”

Keith’s face twists like he’s grappling with a terrible taste in his mouth. “Well, my parents are dead,” he says abruptly, gaze back on the couch, cold now. “It’s fine,” he adds absently as Lance twitches in shocked sympathy. “I never liked them anyway.”

Lance watches him fold inward, in limbs and thoughts. He’s tired now, tired like he’d been on the kitchen floor, dealing with Lance’s anxiety exploding everywhere.

“I like my brother,” the other man finally says, lashes fluttering as he searches empty space. “He, uh. He was more like a dad than my father ever was. But, I don’t know. We never…it was never…like your family.”

This is personal. This is – _really_ personal. And it’s not like Lance doesn’t appreciate it, but he didn’t ask for…he doesn’t want…

Lance clears his throat. “What about work? Or…or hobbies?”

“No,” Keith says. “I mean, I work. It’s just, just work.”

“W-what do you _do_?” Lance finally asks.

“Nothing, anymore.” Keith meets his eyes and Lance hears that pause between the words – knows that Keith knows he heard it.

“What _did_ you do?” Quieter.

“Lots of distractions.” Keith rubs at his arms, fingers flexing across forearms still covered by his jacket, even though it’s warm in here. “Lots of forgetting.”

And Lance may not know him very well, but he can’t stand by and watch even a stranger wear an expression half as haunted as that. Anyone with an empathetic bone in their body would feel the same rush of protectiveness that drops his hand on top of Keith’s.

Except Keith’s fingers move beneath his, and Keith’s lips part when Lance looks up, and Keith’s face holds a different kind of fear – and the protectiveness becomes something else suddenly, like a switch being flipped.

Lance snatches back his hand and shoots to his feet and coughs to hide the heat that’s flooded his face.

That wasn’t – couldn’t have been – Keith wasn’t looking at him like that because – right?

“Sorry, I – ” Keith starts after a minute, sounding confused. But Lance doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want to think about it, waves him away and does what he likes to think he does best: laugh. Awkwardly. As he ushers the other man out the door. “Well, thanks, Keith. You really earned that money tonight, huh? Cool talk. Goodnight!”

Keith opens his mouth as Lance waves one last time and then closes the door in his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tired y'all  
> i'm v tired  
> con's comin up so i'll probs be mia for a while seeya  
> comments still help me live thx


	8. Skulls and Roses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT JESUS I FORGOT TW: mention of self harm scars  
> -  
> Lol remember when I said I would be mia bc of con,,, I lied for this week, but con is next weekend - AND we’re also about to have some Changes in-fic sO I’m not gonna post next week bc crunching, working, doin that college grind & tryin to post might kill me bUT when we come back not only will stuff happen, chapters will be longer!! I’m tired of this tiny short lil chapters shit so see u later with more, hopefully improved content y’all

No one can say Keith doesn’t try.

He tries very, very goddamn hard to not feel like his chest is being stomped on whenever he thinks about Lance. About the hand that had taken his own and then, just as quickly, been snatched back.

God, what if he knows?

Scratch that. He definitely knows. Keith’s crush is sickeningly obvious at this point. He has to know.

What if he’s _disgusted_? What if Lance is horribly homophobic? What if he asks Keith not to come back? What if he doesn’t want A Gay around his daughter? What if Keith doesn’t get to babysit Liliana again?

“Buddy, you look like someone kicked your dog. Hunk’s not gonna yell at you, but I will. You’ll scare customers with that kind of face, lighten up.” Pidge nudges him.

Keith blinks himself out of the spiral. He’s here, at Shay’s, way too early, absently cleaning the counter of the breakfast bar, and Pidge is looking up at him with more worry than he deserves.

“I’m fine,” he says. Yawns. Beats back another depressing, intrusive thought about Lance and his panic when Keith had thought for a minute that maybe...

“Don’t buy it.” Pidge’s eyes narrow and Keith doesn’t have time to run as they grab for his ear and yank him downwards. “Tell me, you MCR reject.”

“Pidge, ow! Shit!”

“Don’t swear in the family-friendly atmosphere, Keith, you’ll scar some poor kid for life.”

“There aren’t any fucking kids around!” Keith yells, pulling at their hand. “Let go!”

“Weak.” They let him go, still eyeing him suspiciously. “Are you gonna tell your concerned friend about your issues or not?”

“It’d take up the whole shift,” Keith snarks, glaring at them.

“ _Keith_!”

“I have a crush and he doesn’t like me back,” Keith spits in a jumble as he starts away, across the near-empty diner, with a vague excuse of cleaning an already clean table in his head. He’s way too embarrassed to stay here, that’s for sure.

“Keeeeith!”

But Pidge chases after him, damn them. Laughing. He’d known they would. “Fuck off.”

“Wow, I thought you were a strictly hit-it-and-quit-it type of guy.” They’re keeping up beside him as he speedwalks the length of the floor and then back. “I thought you were a real heart-of-stone, doesn’t-love-anyone style dude. I thought you liked one night stands all the way. And I thought – ”

“Pidge,” he growls as he grinds to a stop.

“ – You got every guy you wanted,” they finish, looking smug.

“Evidently not,” he hisses.

“God, you’re _red!_ ” they crow. “Ah, Keith, thanks. This was a good laugh.”

Keith also tries very hard not to sulk then, but Pidge figures it out maybe a half hour later with a scrunched brow and a frown. “Hey, are you pissed?”

“No,” he says, unconvincingly.

“Sorry,” they say, lower lip pulled between their teeth. Pause, then. “Talk to me about him?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles, twisting at his apron. “Yeah, I will.”

Pidge spends a long time after that teasing much more gently, with a tone of _well, of course you can get him to like you_ , a side of _I’m sure you’ll get there_ , and _don’t worry so much, Keith_. Except Keith worries. A lot. For good reason.

***

It is something, babysitting Liliana. She smiles at him more now, still mostly shyly. He’s figured out her favorite sandwich (turkey and melted cheese), and that she likes when he puts on really stupid voices for reading (especially high-pitched ones).

Tonight, she chooses to sit next to him on the couch, instead of on the opposite side. He shifts nervously at her eyes over his shoulder and after a couple pages, pauses to take off his coat – it’s warm when she’s sitting right there, almost cuddled against him.

It takes a couple more pages of _Frog and Toad_ to notice that she’s not paying attention to the book anymore. She’s pulled back away from him to trace his bared arm with her eyes.

Keith can’t help the quick urge to cover it back up – his sleeve of tattoos aren’t super child-friendly – but she’s already absorbed, reaching out to press a hand to the human skull on the outside of his bicep. He looks down at it, flustered.

Red roses spill from the skull’s eyes and mouth, thorny but beautiful. Liliana touches a petal, and he suppresses an anxious shiver.

It had been the first tattoo he’d gotten after…everything. After Josh, after his parents, after they’d lost the house and had to force themselves back up on their own feet. Shiro hadn’t liked it – they didn’t really have the money – but when Keith had sullenly uncovered it, Shiro had _understood_. That Keith needed a reminder that flowers could bloom from destruction.

“Pretty,” Liliana whispers, watching the ink-and-skin shift as Keith apprehensively, obligingly tilts it towards her. “Scary, though.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles, watching as she moves on down his arm to other pieces. “I was scared when I got it.” It was a reminder to not be so scared.

He almost bats her away when he realizes where her fingers land – this isn’t out of concern for her anymore, it’s a knee-jerk reaction of self-preservation now. Fingertips trail across the raised lines crisscrossing his forearms underneath the color of meaningless coverup tats, and she looks up at him as he tries to inhale.

“I have one too.”

A moment of sheer panic – she’s so small, she can’t have been touched by this pain, she deserves better than he got, she –

But it’s a patch of lightened scar tissue in a large, irregular scrape up her elbow. Unintentional.

“I fell out of a tree.”

He doesn’t cry. He never cries, he hasn’t since…since before his parents died. But as he looks at the little girl perched next to him on the couch, proudly displaying the scar that was a badge of playground honor and not a defeated cry for help – his eyes burn and he clears his throat and nods. “That’s cool.”

She smiles, happy, and turns back to the book. And he reads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (ps I’d like to extend gentle but v loving thanks to radiowatermelon for savin me from the Depression Spiral of thinkin no one likes this fic bc I’m a validation-thirsty lil bitch BUT THEN u validated the ever lovin shit out of me with ur comment so thanks babe as the singular comment on that last chap u really made it count ;u; I lov ♥)


	9. Worn Frame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy timeskip & longer chap time finally let’s get this show on the road ;0

Lance is avoiding him, kind of. They’ve developed a routine within several weeks – but not a good one. Keith picks Liliana up, plays with her, fixes her snacks, and reads to her, most often. Bargains for bedtime to occur punctually with the promise of extra reading. Then he waits with baited breath for keys in the door, hoping that maybe they’ll actually have another conversation, maybe he’ll have the balls to actually ask _hey, yeah, what the fuck was that, that first night?_

But nothing seems to happen. Lance just opens the door, looking exhausted and, even if he can muster up a grin, rarely smiling with his eyes. Then he hands Keith a ten dollar bill (Keith _did_ manage to completely refuse the second $20 that was given to him) and waves goodbye.

Few words are exchanged. Keith looks at him, trying to at least make eye contact. Lance looks elsewhere. So things are going _swimmingly_ , Keith says sarcastically whenever Pidge prods him for an update. But hey, at least they’re not going _terribly_ , which he doesn’t realize is a possibility until it is.

He doesn’t mean to see it.

It has to have been at least a month. Maybe two. Two months of their interactions leaving him wanting. Because he – fucked up, somehow.

But the boxes have slowly been unpacking themselves, contents finding their way onto & into shelves and tables and corners. And Liliana’s been tucked into bed, and Keith has already beaten three levels on a stupid mobile game he doesn’t care about. So he wanders.

Slowly, carefully, eyes running over newer objects that have made their appearances recently. A rickety lamp that leans to the right with an ugly, outdated floral lampshade by the couch. New sets of mismatched dishes taking up kitchen cabinets when Keith opens them to make snacks. A scratched-up side table with what looks like dog teeth marks on the legs next to Lance’s bed.

A picture in a worn frame.

Keith meanders closer in involuntary steps. It’s hidden in the corner on the side table, turned away from the rest of the room. Private. He doesn’t think – maybe he’s just tired, maybe deep down he’s…too curious for his own good…but he peers at it, cranes his neck to look.

It’s Lance – younger, happy. He’s laughing. No Liliana in sight, Keith thinks at first, it makes an odd picture, but. She is.

The woman next to him is echoing his laughter, eyes alight as she looks at him.

Keith picks it up as something in his chest compresses painfully. Unthinkingly – honestly, thinking even less about his actions than he already had been −

She’s pregnant, heavily so. With curly dark hair and brown eyes, and _Liliana looks like her_.

They both look so happy.

And Lance has her picture next to his bed.

Keith doesn’t hear the keys in the door. It’s already opening when he looks up, caught, and it’s too late to put the picture back − to undo the crass, stupid, unnecessary invasion of privacy.

Lance meets his eyes with shocked panic brewing in his own when he sees where Keith is, when his gaze darts down to the frame still clutched in Keith’s hands.

 

Lance has been managing. Managing to continue working, managing to ignore his boss and coworkers that hate him, managing to keep Keith at a cool distance. Managing to smother whispered screams into his pillow at night where no one – especially not Lili – can hear them.

Managing. Not well. He’s not doing it all very well.

He’s just not doing very well in general.

It kind of hurts, to be honest. To be holding everything up alone. He called his mama last weekend, for a bit. She’s busy too, trying to scrape together making her own living for the sake of the family. He almost told her, everything that was happening, almost cracked and broke, but he couldn’t, couldn’t, wanted to listen to everything she had to say, and then she had to hang up. And he had to go back to lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, pathetically, wearily, hopelessly crying, alone.

He misses a time when he could curl up next to his mama. He can hold Lili, but she can’t know he’s having a hard time. She’s only six, she needs him to be strong and there for her.

So he looks past his cut wage, past Lotor’s cold eyes, past how close he’s coming to not pulling even with the rent and expenses now.

And he looks past the utter, all-encompassing isolation he’s been sinking into.

He…regrets sending Keith home without acknowledgement outside of payment, night after night. Several times, he almost opens his mouth to start some kind of conversation – even an empty one – but he keeps seeing in his head a spark of something in Keith’s face over their joined hands, and the words die in his throat, a painful choke.

Keith had been looking for something from him, something Lance can’t give.

He’s too frightened to give, flighty at the first hint of _it_ , scared of what it might mean but – most of all, perhaps – he just…doesn’t _have_ any more of that to give. He gave it away, and then he lost it all.

Now Keith stands there. Holding the last shreds of it in his hands, a secret Lance never told him, and Lance feels the blow deep in his core.

Keith doesn’t really know, but he _knows_ , as he stares back, tinges of his own horror dawning across his face.

“I’m − ”

“Put it down,” Lance whispers.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t − ”

“Put it back, Keith!” Lance yells.

Keith drops it, shakily, on the bed.

Lance breathes.

“I – I didn’t mean − ”

“Shh.” Lance closes his eyes, covers his face, as he lurches to his bed, fingertips skimming cold metal. He takes it up to hold to his chest. Breathing.

“Lance.” A wobbly voice. He’s sorry for it.

“It isn’t yours to look at,” he finally says, wetly.

“I know it isn’t. I shouldn’t…I fucked up. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for…all of it. And I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable.”

“What?” Lance pulls away his damp hand to peer at Keith. A drop clings to his eyelash, he swipes at it.

Keith is staring at the ground, this time – usually it’s Lance who’s avoiding _his_ gaze.

“I, uh. We haven’t really…talked. And, that’s my fault. I think. I’m sorry.”

“Ugh. Shit.” Lance sniffs. “It’s not…you’re fine. It’s fine. It’s me.”

“No, I pushed it too far. I’m…I want to be friends with you.” Keith swallows as he peers up at Lance from under his lashes, adding a second too late, “…man.”

Lance can’t help a tired almost-titter. Just a breath. “Did you just try to unnecessarily dudebro me?”

This is the most they’ve exchanged since the first night, and Keith looks visibly unsure, uncomfortable, too on edge to laugh back. Lance sighs and falls back on the bed, Vi’s picture still clutched to his chest, staring up at the ceiling. He’s spent, his entire body feels like a wrung out towel, and he’s so, so sick of… _playing keep away_ or _whatever_ this is. He can’t do…what he’d thought was maybe in Keith’s gaze. But friends… “I…I haven’t exactly been making many friends, so. Yeah, I mean…yeah, I appreciate it.”

“Is this ever not gonna be awkward?” Keith murmurs, rubbing at the back of his neck.

Lance closes his eyes. “I…don’t know. What can I do? To make it – not?”

Keith is silent for a time. “I don’t know either. But I’m really tired of not talking. You look really tired, all the time, and…friends help each other, you know? You don’t have to talk about…all that. The, uh, picture. But you’re obviously struggling. And you’re not inconveniencing me, just. Let me help you.”

Lance feels the dark-tinged question of _why_ twist in his chest for a moment, a breath too long − before he shoves it down, opens his eyes, sits up, meets Keith’s eyes and carefully, cautiously says, “Okay.”

 

 _Friends_ works. Keith hasn’t been holding out for two months to be disappointed by the label. Hell, he doesn’t have that many friends either. It’s cool to sit down and talk about nothing in particular with Lance. Or listen to Lance talk about nothing in particular, mostly.

That’s what his weekday nights become. Lance has taken to coming in, flopping down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, and beginning a vapid conversation with lines like “Pineapple on pizza is probably one of the worst abominations on this earth, right?” or “the barista who gave me my coffee this morning was a complete dick, let me tell you −”

He still looks cleaned out every night. Sometimes he falls asleep in the middle of a not-quite-convincing rant, and Keith has to debate to himself whether to wake him back up to lock the door after him, or just…pull the blankets over him and leave.

He does the latter, usually, because Lance really needs every minute he can get. His face is gray as it squishes against the pillow, exhaustion tracing lines across his skin even in sleep.

Neither of them say anything about it.

There’s still so much Lance doesn’t say. He doesn’t talk about why his eyes are puffy when he comes home some days, or say why the fridge is so empty when he apologizes for it.

When Keith half-addresses it in a careful tone of, “So…what’s going on?” in a lull of Lance not rambling for a bit, Lance merely laughs with a nervous edge and changes the subject.

Keith tries again later, “Can I help out with anything?”

Lance grins with red-rimmed raw eyes, “You are, don’t worry about it.”

Finally, Keith drops a last, “Well, you can talk to me about anything. If you need.”

Lance jerks a nod, a polite smile, and Keith accepts that…this is all he can do. Hopes that talking about stupid things actually does help something. Tosses in his own stupid comments and watches as Lance continues deflating every night anyway.

Keith knows it isn’t really helping.

But also, he thinks it’s probably better than their previous silence, or just leaving Lance alone. So when Lance begins avoiding his gaze again and Keith asks if everything is okay, it’s with some trepidation that he listens to Lance toss the reason over his shoulder as he washes up dishes.

“Lili’s going to her grandparents’ for this next week. So, uh. You don’t need to come in. I’ll…I’ll see you next Monday.”

“Lance −” Keith can’t help drifting around the counter, closer.

“Thanks. For listening to me babbling all the time. You get a break for a while.” Lance turns and presses a sharp-edged metal object into Keith’s chest with a tired twitch of his mouth. Keith takes it. A copy of the key.

“Lance, are you −”

Lance pats his shoulder. “Now you can lock the door behind you instead of just sneaking out. I’ll see you.”

 

Mr. and Mrs. Harrison have picked up more gray around the temples since Lance has seen them last. They don’t visit often – Lance has moved farther away than is realistic for regular meetups − but they’re the only relatives Lili knows.

“You’ve grown,” coos Mrs. Harrison as she pulls Lili up to her hip with some difficulty, presenting her with a lollipop. “You look more like your mother every time I see you, darling.”

Lili blinks at her as she pops the candy into her mouth, quietly excited. Lance only ever talks about Vi rarely, but she knows enough to squirm happily under the praise, and besides – she likes going to stay with her grandparents. They can afford to spoil her rotten. Unlike Lance.

He steps in to stroke her head and give her a kiss, fighting the bittersweet pressure in his chest. “Have fun, _corazón_. I’ll…I’ll miss you.”

“ _Adiós, Papa_!” She twists to give him his own kiss on the cheek.

Mr. Harrison claps his shoulder in his gruff, awkward way, Mrs. Harrison smiles absently at him, and they turn to load Lili into the car as she waves at him over her grandma’s shoulder. She blows another kiss as they close the door and get in themselves.

Lance laughs, or tries to, as the car drives away.

Funny how it sounds more like a sob.

It’s only a week. She’ll have much more fun there, where she’ll be given whatever she wants – what she deserves.

Only a week. A week, completely by himself. With no Lili to cuddle, no Keith to even chatter at.

Funny how utterly empty his chest feels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i like pineapple on pizza actually and haters can suck my dick ;)  
> anyway me too @ the lance feels,, catch me bangin on pots & pans yellin at my depression to gtfo only it’s not workin wtf !! thought that was a surefire way to manage mental illness


	10. Withdraw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: gross sexual harassment & assault (not rape), also I lowkey triggered myself writing the resulting disassociation afterwards so hah,, be aware  
> honestly, I fucked myself trying to get this done on time bc everything ended up being so Dramatic and Intense that I kept having to take lots of long breaks, even when editing this -_-;; tf me  
> anyway if i don't stop trying to fix this mess of a chap i will never post so here sorry if some things...,,don't make sense D:

“Leaving late again? Actually going to do your work?”

The words slither into Lance’s psyche, curl around his neck with the weight of a venomous snake, ready to strike. They’re heavy, and ready to do much, much more damage to him. He would know, it’s their speaker’s favorite pastime.

Lotor’s lips are parted inches from the shell of his ear, curled in a smug smirk. “Are you ever going to push back, Lance? Or are you too much of a sniveling coward? You’re just going to sit here and do your mediocre work and continue to prove me right every time I bring up in meetings how much we need to replace you?”

He’s been sitting here for a week. Doing the work he can. Hardening his shoulders and his heart against everything Lotor’s been throwing at him. It’s become worse this week, really, seemingly because he’s been so determined to ignore it. More jeering than he’s had to deal with in the past. Lotor is stooping lower and lower to satisfy…whatever problems he has with himself that have brought him to this point of lashing out at Lance however he can.

Lance is so close. It’s Friday, he’s stuck it out this long. All weekend, he can just…do nothing. No Lotor. But more importantly, come Sunday night, he’ll have Lili back.

“Nothing to say?” Taunting, cold.

Abruptly, Lance stands.

He has the kitchen to escape to, still. Isn’t going to spill any coffee, isn’t going to give Lotor any excuses. He can get water, just…he can just get away from the desk.

Only footsteps echo close behind him. Lance tenses and stares straight ahead and tries to close the kitchen door behind him. It’s caught by long fingers and a burst of panicky speed pushes him into the room – only he’s propelled further than he intends, all the way to the opposite wall – he whirls and tries to slip away from the man advancing towards him, but Lotor slams a hand to the wall in his way.

He’s not smirking anymore. His eyes just burn with inexplicable hatred as he steps ever closer, close enough to feel his breath play across Lance’s face.

“What will it take to break you?”

“Get away,” Lance chokes, trying to shove him backward.

“Answer me.”

“Why do you hate me?” Lance pleads, struggling to squirrel away hopelessly. “What have I ever done to you?”

Lotor’s gaze trails his face, introspective. “Zarkon asks much of me. My father demands perfection.”

“The boss is your _dad_?” Lance gapes.

Lotor’s eyes narrow as they snap to Lance’s. “I only expect the same of those under me.”

“So, so…” Lance works it out in disbelief. Blood is still pumping in his ears, adrenaline shaking his limbs as he presses his back to the wall, but he has to think. “You take out your…your daddy issues on me? I’m your punching bag when your dad says horrible shit to you −”

“ _Quiet_ ,” snarls Lotor, and his hand closes on Lance’s jaw.

Lance hiccups an approximation of the word “what” as the man leans even closer, too close, close enough to murmur, “is this what it takes?” and – kisses – him.

It takes him a solid minute to fight the frozen shock and find a sudden burst of strength to force Lotor off.

“I’ll quit,” he says, before he can think, “I’m – I’m quitting. I’ll leave! Is that what you – what you want −”

Lotor’s eyes seem to gleam in the dull yellow florescent lighting. “And what will you do when the company takes your apartment from you?”

Lance gasps and swats him further away still. “I – I pay my rent, I −”

“Your rent is lowered because you work for us. _Your apartment_ is _yours_ because you work for us.”

“What do you _want_?” Lance cries. Everything is hot and cold, his brain scrambled, he feels sick.

“Why don’t you leave for the day, Lance? Maybe when you come back, you’ll be in the right frame of mind to perform well for once?”

Lotor’s won, whatever this battle was, whatever the spoils of war are.

Lance is left trembling, backing out the door, barely stopping to grab his jacket by his desk before he’s rushing up the stairs, out of the lobby, into the cold on shaky legs.

Rain pours from the sky, it soaks him even as he struggles to tug on his jacket…it has no hood, no real weight, and water drips from his hair, dribbles down his cheeks.

He has to wait for the bus that he just missed, open to the elements, holding himself up against the signpost. Gets on, creates a puddle where he sits, numb.

He’s in and out as he sees his feet on the stairs up, his hand on the doorknob, his face in the mirror. Blank eyes. Gone.

The apartment is still when he goes to stand in the middle of it. It feels wrongly alien, not his, not his home. So easily seized and emptied of everything he owns, the life he’s built.

It _is_ empty. He is alone. Completely.

The Harrisons only have a landline. He waits as it rings, arm wrapped around himself. He’s still wet through, he registers, as he stands and shivers and waits and waits and waits. They don’t answer. There’s no answering machine.

He listens to the tone for a long time before he has to pull it away from his ear and hit the button to hang up.

What does he do?

Who can he…

He stares at the open contacts menu. He doesn’t have many. Most of them live far, far, far away. Most of them he hasn’t spoken to in months, years.

H, Harrisons, I, empty, J, empty, K.

Keith.

“Lance?”

“Ah,” he whispers. His voice feels shot. “I didn’t – sorry – I shouldn’t have −”

“Lance,” Keith’s voice comes stronger now from the phone, after a pause. There’s chatter in the background, voices and music, that abruptly cuts. “What’s wrong? Talk to me.”

Lance can’t really, he doesn’t even know fully what’s wrong. He’s not really here right now.

“Do you need someone?” Keith might have repeated it, several times. It’s carefully pronounced. Weighty words.

“I…yeah,” Lance breathes.

And the man on the other end sounds determined, certain, like he is actually in control of something in a world flipping completely out of Lance’s control. “I’ll be there soon.”

 

Keith has a key now. But he knocks, first, because if Lance has locked himself in, he knows he could very well need that locked door.

But Lance doesn’t come to the door, immediately, and that…that could be worse, honestly, if he’s –

Keith unlocks the door in a hurry.

Lance sits in the living room, on the floor. His hair is plastered to his head wetly, his phone held to his chest. He kind of blinks up at Keith as Keith comes to stand in front of him.

“What happened?”

Lance blinks and stares. He looks far away.

Keith crouches down. Doesn’t touch. “Lance. Did you take anything? Did you do anything? To yourself?” Chest tight, he lets his gaze run over the man. Lance just seems…lost. “Or did someone do something to you?”

There’s a slight flinch at that one.

“Yeah,” Lance mumbles, the word barely articulated.

Keith’s stomach flips. “Do you need medical attention?” he forces himself to ask. Because god knows the hospitals had never really _helped_ him, but he’d still needed them.

Lance shakes his head, and Keith swallows back a shaky breath. “What do you need?”

“Dunno,” comes the blank, much-too-quiet response.

Okay. Okay, okay. Keith looks around and goes for the bathroom – his best guess – yes. He grabs the stack of folded, threadbare towels under the sink. Lance’s clothes are sopping wet, he’s trembling a little, he needs to be dry and warm and –

He probably can’t do that, himself. Not right now.

“Can I use this? On your hair?”

Faded blue eyes blink again up at him. He’s much closer, as he holds the towel up for Lance to see, and vaguely nod at.

Lance has been lively in his ranting and raving lately. Tired, yes. Drained, definitely. But not…empty. It hurts, a little, how strange and wrong it is.

Keith drapes the towel over Lance’s head and gently, he starts rubbing him dry.

Lance is docile under his hands, like he’s a child, instead of a grown man with his own kid. Keith dries until the almost dripping hair is only damp clumps spread across his forehead, spiking up and sticking out when he pulls the cloth away. He smooths it down – well, tries to, Lance’s hair only springs back up – and turns to the other towels.

“Coat off?” he asks, and Lance complies. The shirt underneath is wet too, and Keith leans close to wrap the next towel around Lance’s shoulders when Lance’s body suddenly tenses against him.

Keith lurches back immediately, anxiously searching Lance’s face – he’s crossed a line, maybe triggered something –

He’s trembling again, and when Keith leans back, his brows are pulled together, eyes closed as he chews an already bitten red lip raw.

“Sorry, sorry −” Keith whispers hurriedly, backing up further before Lance’s hands suddenly shoot out to grab at his shirt front.

Bewildered, Keith allows himself to be hauled in again, even closer, until Lance buries his head in Keith’s shoulder.

“Sorry,” he hears in muffled echo into his shirt − so quiet, it’s mostly a puff of warm air into the cotton.

Keith doesn’t know what to do. With his hands. With himself.

_What would Shiro do?_

Shiro would hug him, if Keith had ever tried to reach out to him like this. Shiro _has_ hugged him, like this.

Keith uncertainly lets fingertips skate lightly across Lance’s arms, his shoulders, waiting for a cue to stop, to leave him alone. It doesn’t come as his arms wrap around the man half in his lap.

His heart is doing odd things in his chest.

He doesn’t…he doesn’t like that. But he can’t unlock his grip.

What the fuck is wrong with him?

Lance is cold, as Keith sits there, in silence, just…holding him, insides awhirl. The small circles he begins to rub into Lance’s back are an automatic impulse he’s never had to deal with before – but Lance needs to be warmer.

“I need…” Lance finally starts to pull back, away. “I need a bath,” he croaks, eyes on the ground. “I need to put on – something other than…this.” He pinches at his shirt, wrinkles his nose.

Keith forces his heartbeat down and nods, jerky. “Okay, I’ll −”

“Don’t leave,” Lance blurts, and sucks his lower lip between his teeth. Looks ashamed. “I mean, if you have to. You can. Sorry.”

“No, I −” Keith clears his throat. “I’ll just. I’ll be outside.”

Lance meets his eyes now, nods timidly, heaves himself up and heads for the bathroom before Keith’s sudden hit of something like adrenaline propels him out the door and down the hall at an almost run – trying to outrun…something.

Telling a pretty man he’d barely known to breathe through a panic attack had been one thing. Helping with Lili, offering to listen. All of those had been well and good. Keith’s crush was a crush. Their friendship had been relatively shallow.

Maybe he should have seen the warning signs coming. But something about this, about…holding Lance until he found himself again, sensing how small he felt against the world trying to tear him apart, feeling… _whatever this is_ inside his own fucking chest is entirely another animal.

It’s still raining when he shoves open the apartment complex’s front door, lets himself drop down onto the steps, scrabble for his pockets.

The cigarette is between his teeth, but the lighter – won’t – fucking – catch.

His fingers shake and he hisses a curse as rain patters on the sidewalk. The world is calm, relaxing as sounds muffle under the sound of drops, of water rushing down drains, tapping at the tiny awning above the steps.

Keith, by comparison, continues his journey halfway to panic. He tries to focus, tries to think it away, wants to smoke it away.

The lighter – red and slim, emblazoned with a fading lion design – flames, goes out, catches again as he holds it to the end of the already chewed-up cig. He’d stolen the lighter, from a hookup, some odd years ago. The guy’s weed had been shitty, anyway, and he’d snorted when Keith had suggested something about sexual reciprocation after he’d sucked the guy’s dick. Taking the lighter had only been fair, really.

That’s what Keith does. He hooks up.

That’s _all_ he does.

Nobody else cares, why should he?

He inhales too much in his need for the burn, and chokes on the smoke like he’s back in middle school, trying to fit into the niche of the niche-less kids, the children who wanted to pretend to forget, who felt alone even when they desperately gathered together.

They didn’t hold each other. They weren’t sources of comfort for one another.

Keith doesn’t seek comfort anymore – he searches for meaningless distractions, to cover and bandage up the festering emptiness, wrap it up in neat bows and shove it back into the corner. When Shiro offers comfort, it’s uncomfortable for Keith to accept, strange to allow. He’s all rough edges, too broken to have it all filled in now by softness, he thinks.

But he’s _known_ that he can’t be capable of offering softness to someone else – he doesn’t know how to do something like that. He doesn’t _care_ _enough_ to try and learn. Doesn’t care about…anything, but especially not any _one_.

Yet here he fucking is. Trembling like a leaf, like he’s caught it from the hug he’d given. Ripping through his cig like actually feeling is going to kill him. He tosses away the smoldering filter and blows white into the rain. Jams another into his mouth, lights up, breathes tobacco, blinks, and blinks, and tries not to feel.

Keith lusts. He doesn’t love. Sexually, romantically, even platonically. He’s not good at it, he’s a mess. The few people close to him are because, for whatever reason, they’ve chased after him when he’s tried to push them away. Keith has been the one chasing Lance, though.

_He doesn’t chase. He doesn’t feel._

He’s only worked through a bit of the second cigarette when he hurls it into the street this time, watches streetlights illuminate as it’s carried away, down the road. Flame extinguished by water.

Well…what does he do now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooof writing lance after…all that…put me in a gr8 headspace….,,I don’t really disassociate but like…..i started to Big Time when I was working on that scene?? Practice self care when trying to get into rough character emotions my dudes  
> edit: this is the gentlest of reminders - if u have any thoughts at all...please comment,, thank,,,, i get real real sad when i get like nothin


	11. Shay's Diner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI IT’S BEEN A MILLION YEARS (literally HALF A YEAR - SIX MONTHS??? WTF???) do I remember how to write this fic?? idk we’ll see :/  
> EDIT after writing the chapter: no i don't it's so much fluffier than usual lol have some No Angst Here Just Happy Shay's Diner Times.....but don't worry every lull is just a calm before a hard storm in this fic :)))

Keith jumps when the door opens behind him, tense as Lance sits beside him, knees to chest. He’s disappearing into a big sweater now, an obviously handmade puffy blue thing with several dropped stitches here and there. It’s pulled up over the lower half of his face, hangs to cover his fingers as he settles down.

Keith follows where his gaze lands, the forgotten pack on the step between them, evidence even if the scent fades in the cool, clean night air. Keith grabs it to stuff it into his back pocket, but Lance has already seen how few are left.

His eyes are clearer, now, as they meet Keith’s in – sympathy? Empathy? …Worry?

“Are you okay?” he asks, as if Keith deserves to be worried after.

“Are you?” Keith counters hoarsely, helplessly. Almost an accusation in response to concern. He doesn’t know how to play these roles. Either of them.

“Nah,” Lance tries to smile. “I’ve been better.”

Keith wants more smoke to draw into his lungs. Lance’s eyes dart to his twitching fingers. “Have you always been a smoker?”

“Yeah.”

“I…I hadn’t seen you do it before.”

“Well, I’m not gonna do it in your apartment.” He sounds surly, nearly angry. That’s not…he doesn’t mean that. “I…that’s rude, I mean. And, and Liliana. I’m not gonna smoke around her.”

Lance looks out into the rain and sighs. “Has it been a rough day for you too?”

“I – yeah.” Only when these stupid… _feelings_ came into the picture.

“So you − you wouldn’t want to, uh…stay. Would you.” Lance picks at a hole in his sleeve, and suddenly Keith feels electrified.

“What?” Like…like…

“I mean. If you wanted, you could have the bed. I can stay on the couch? I just, um. I’m really −”

“No, yeah,” Keith interrupts. Yeah, of course. To be a friend. To keep him company. Nervous sweaty hands wipe down his jeans. “Sure. I can take the couch. I just have work tomorrow morning, so. Or – do you want to come?”

“To your work?” Lance pulls a thread loose now, eyes wide as they’re directed toward Keith. “People wouldn’t be…mad?”

Keith has a nebulous kind of idea – has been kicking it around subconsciously, for a while, not entirely formed, in the back of his mind. If Lance isn’t having a good time doing what he’s doing at work, then maybe he can do something else, elsewhere, for work.

Like…at Shay’s. They’re always looking for more workers.

Well. He doesn’t know how well that kind of proposition would go down with Lance. But hell if the entire staff at Shay’s wouldn’t take to Lance like fish to water. And maybe…maybe Lance would do the same to them. So it’s with a bit of a well-intentioned ulterior motive that he makes himself casually shrug and say, “Nah.”

Whatever, even if Lance keeps on with this job that seems to be sucking him dry − he could use a friend like Hunk. Everyone could use a friend like Hunk.

Lance is swallowing now, fingers in his slightly damp hair, tugging at it. Keith bites back his own want to touch it.

“Yeah, okay. If it isn’t an issue, I’d…I’d like that.”

Keith nods, dumbly. “Okay.”

Lance looks at him, smiles a little, a touch of teasing. “Okay.”

The tension breaks at that, because Keith has to roll his eyes and grin and say, “okay” again and Lance huffs a laugh and lets his eyes flutter closed as he leans back on his hands. “You want to just…go to sleep now, then?”

“Definitely,” Keith sighs, and heaves himself to his feet. Holds out a hand to help Lance up. But Lance just looks at it for a moment, then looks up at him, and it’s a tired kind of warmth in his eyes that catches bittersweetly in Keith’s chest.

“Thank you, Keith. For everything.”

“Of course,” Keith manages, as Lance’s hand catches his.

 

Lance awkwardly putters around the apartment as Keith settles on the couch, “just fine” with simply a threadbare blanket and a spare pillow. Kicks off his shoes and tugs off his signature red leather jacket, pulling the blanket around his shoulders before Lance can get more than a glimpse of the abundance of tattoos winding up and down both arms.

Lance is kind of surprised by how curious he is about the tattoos, the stories behind them. Keith listens to him talk, but since the cavalier confession of his dead parents, hasn’t shared much of anything about his own life.

He’s scrolling through his phone when Lance finally sits down on the bed, spent. The couch isn’t more than five feet from where the bed is shoved into the corner, so it makes sense that Keith’s eyes would flick up to meet his, that a corner of his mouth would turn up a little – it just doesn’t make total sense that Lance would automatically respond with a smile of his own, that…that Keith’s smile would widen, soften in reply, and that Lance would feel a flutter in his chest at this.

“Goodnight,” he mumbles, and turns over, so that he can’t see Keith’s hair spread out across the pillow, the corner of Keith’s bared, broad shoulder in his tank top, Keith’s toes peeking out from the edge of the blanket − covered in adorably fluffy red socks.

***

Lance almost regrets his promise when the quiet but insistent drone of Keith’s alarm startles him awake, a full hour earlier than he usually wakes up. Just kind of groans at the rustle of the other man getting up, and pulls his blanket over his head.

A whisper of a laugh. “Lance.”

“No,” he moans.

“Are you coming or not? I have to open.”

“It’s a _Saturday_.”

“Diners open early, man.”

He listens to Keith getting ready for a minute, still only half awake, until a hand touches his shoulder gently. “Last chance.”

“Fine,” he grumbles, rolling out of bed. “Gimme a minute.”

He’s yawning when he finally makes it out of the bathroom, _pretty_ sure he’s fully dressed, and entertains himself for a moment with the hair that’s sticking up at the back of an almost equally exhausted looking Keith’s head. Keith gives him a tired, suspicious look as he snickers, but merely opens the door silently and locks it behind them both before Lance can reach for his pocket. Right. He gave Keith a house key. He’s kind of floating in a tired, half-comprehending stage of why he feels strange about that as they take the stairs downward and out into the lobby when a thought occurs to him.

“Wait, how are we getting −”

Keith stops next to a shiny red motorcycle, looking back at Lance with an eyebrow raised.

“What.”

“What?” Keith repeats in a less flat tone, pulling a helmet from the back.

“You have a _motorcycle_?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know why I’m surprised. I shouldn’t be. Am I going to die?”

Keith flicks him another glance and hands the helmet to him as he swings a leg over the seat. Another grin tugs at the corner of his mouth. More of a smirk, that Lance…likes way too much.

“Maybe. I like to go fast.”

“Fuck,” Lance mumbles as he gingerly clambers on behind the other man, wrapping his arms around Keith’s ribs in a slack grip that turns tight as soon as Keith revs the engine. He doesn’t have the breath to yell when Keith takes off.

***

“I’m going…to kill you,” Lance pants as he staggers onto the sidewalk, legs jelly. Keith already drives like he has a death wish, anyway.

The other man is grinning again as he steps up next to Lance, hair mussed nicely from the wind. He doesn’t have a dumb looking cowlick anymore, Lance notes sourly, and looks like he’s humming with excitement instead of Lance’s adrenaline stemming from pure fear.

“After all the trouble it took you to find a babysitter?” Keith shoots at him, and tries the handles of the glass store front before them, though the sign on the door still reads _CLOSED_. The doors open, and Keith mutters something that sounds like, “Please not Pidge, please not Pidge…”

In the half lit interior, a mousy-haired man in a yellow apron that matches the upholstery of each diner booth straightens up from behind the counter, smiling, as Keith steps inside. “Keith! Hey!” His eyes widen and then narrow as he catches sight of Lance, and it becomes a smirk. “And who’s this?”

“My friend, he’s hanging out here today,” Keith mumbles, brushing past the man towards the swinging doors to the back as Lance nervously stops at the counter. “Lance, that’s Matt. Matt, don’t −”

“ _Lance_ , huh?” Matt drawls. “ _Interesting._ ”

“I’m –” Keith tosses Matt a single glare before disappearing into the kitchen, not even bothering to finish his sentence.

“So, Lance.” Matt still looks inexplicably smug. “How’d you get to be Keith’s… _buddy?_ ”

Lance feels like he’s missing something. “Uh, he – he helped me out.”

The smirk curls further. “Oh, I’m _sure he did._ ”

Keith bursts out of the doors, in his own apron now, to cuff Matt upside the back of the head. He looks a little pink, and Lance feels like his own face is a little hot.

“Hey Matt, _shut the fuck up_. I help him by babysitting his kid, all right?”

The smirk fades for a minute, then suddenly, Matt’s eyes are widening in apparent…delight. “That’s really, _really_ interesting Keith, because you know, I was talking to Kat – I mean, Pidge, and they were telling me something about −”

“ _Matt_ ,” Keith growls, and it’s serious enough this time that Matt actually cuts himself off, looking a bit contrite.

“Okay, Keith. Sorry.”

“’s fine,” Keith grumbles, reaching into his pocket and then up – putting his hair up with a tie, Lance registers, because he’s staring. “…ance?”

“What?” he startles, blinking. Dimly hears Matt laugh quietly. Keith is staring back at him.

“I said, do you want some coffee? You can hang out in a booth or something?”

“Y-yeah. Yeah, sure, thanks.” Lance kind of drops sideways onto a diner stool. He must still be feeling a little weak in the knees from that motorcycle ride. He also, apparently, must be losing himself in his own thoughts because it seems like no time at all before a yellow apron appears in front of him again.

“Here you go.” Matt places a warm mug down in front of him, smiling pleasantly now. It’s a stark contrast to the kind of workplace manner Lance is used to. “First pot of the day. Keith’s sorting out the kitchen right now, but he’ll get you refills if you want them. There’s perks that come with worming your way underneath that hard shell, eh?”

“Oh. Thanks.” Lance peers down into the black coffee as Matt nods and turns to continue setting up behind the counter. Keith’s nowhere in sight, but even so, Lance barely bucks up enough courage to restart the unprompted conversation with, “So…Keith’s got a…a hard shell?”

Matt looks back at him in surprise and snorts. “Keith? Yeah, duh. As far as I know, everybody at Shay’s are about the only people he hangs out with, and that’s only cause he was strong-armed into working here. Shiro – that’s his brother – made him come in when Hunk was absolutely desperate for another person on shift. Keith’s still pretty distant to all of us most of the time.”

“Hunk?” Lance ventures. Because that…sounds like it’s a person’s name, but… _Hunk_?

“The boss,” Matt smiles, piling still-slightly-steaming doughnuts into a display. “He’s a character.”

That doesn’t answer Lance’s unspoken question of _what kind of name is that_ , but…

The door jingles. “Speak of the devil!” Matt exclaims. “Or maybe angel is more fitting.”

“Matt, how’re things?” The large man stepping through the door is beaming, like it’s not not-even-six-in-the-morning. How everyone around here is so smiley so early without any form of caffeine in their hand, Lance isn’t sure.

“Well, Keith brought a _friend_ in today, so it feels like the world might be about to end,” Matt laughs, and Lance tries not to hunker down anxiously as “Hunk” follows Matt’s gesture to his seat.

“Wow,” Hunk finally says, blinking at Lance. “I…wasn’t aware that Keith was that close with…anyone.”

“Is that you, Hunk? We’re almost out of lettuce.” Keith pushes open the kitchen doors, meets Lance’s gaze. “Ah, and, uh, this is Lance. He’s gonna be hanging out today, I hope that isn’t an issue.”

“No, no, definitely not!” Hunk enthuses, his smile apparently set on giving the sun a run for its money. “I’m glad to meet any friend of Keith’s, Lance, I’m Hunk!”

“Yeah,” Lance says as his hand is dwarfed in Hunk’s for a firm handshake. “I’m…I’m glad too.”

“How did you get to know Keith?”

“I babysit for him,” Keith sighs again, fiddling with his ponytail. Lance _isn’t looking_ as he does that, definitely not.

There’s a pause, and Lance looks up to Hunk’s confused expression. “…When? You work almost every day.”

“In the evenings.”

Another pause, and Hunk raises an eyebrow. “Wait, Keith, you didn’t…switch your shifts so that you could −”

Keith clears his throat. “ _Anyway._ We have to finish opening, it’s almost six.”

Hunk and Matt exchange looks as Keith turns back into the kitchen. Lance shakes three sugar packets into his coffee and tries to sip at it enough to fit some creamer in, wondering what exactly he’s signed himself up for by coming here.

But, well…it’s maybe not so bad, he thinks, when Hunk bustles by, casually sliding one of those freshly-made doughnuts across the counter.

Maybe…maybe he can afford to let his guard down a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this got so happy and teasing lol I’m not done with the angst for long but the boys did deserve a break ;)  
> AHHH this definitely isn’t my most popular fic but I’ve really missed it…it’s one of my own personal favorites tbh ;_; I’ve let it sit for too long unupdated…thank u to y’all that have been commenting such wonderfully sweet things on this while I worked on other stuff, you guys are the reason I came back to reread it and start it back up again!! i appreciate you deeply!!

**Author's Note:**

> if you wanna be a sweetheart and support me and this fic in a completely free way you can [reblog this post right here](https://kayizcray.tumblr.com/post/178287878098/you-haunt-me)! Or share this trash with your friends! My dudes any form of spreading my work to others is the best fuckin thing lemme tell ya  
> You can find smol-bara the artist's work [here](http://smol-bara.tumblr.com/post/178288565016/here-are-my-pieces-that-i-drew-for-the-klance-big)! (spoilerish for future chapters tho!)  
> [Fic Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/43PdtSRtN7LZBUQ5Da92OH?si=NFC5p6U4ShqY5GsxTdAtRQ)  
> -  
> comments are my lifeblood ( ˘ ³˘)♥  
> -  
> [my creative tumblr](http://kayizcray.tumblr.com) | [my personal tumblr](http://ihaveacleverfandomurl.tumblr.com/) | ([& my cosplay instagram](https://www.instagram.com/kayizcray/) with some voltron cosplay on it)  
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